Second Chances
by Kizmet
Summary: In the Mirai-timeline, Bulma and Vegeta are reincarnated for a second chance at being together.
1. New Students

**Second Chances**

**Chapter One: New Students**

**Disclaimer: **Characters are the property of Akira Toriyama, I'm just borrowing them for some non-profit fun.

**Author's (way too long) Notes:** "Anata" was always meant to be a one-shot, but more than one reviewer wanted to know what happened next and, well, plot-bunnies happened. Thanks for the inspiration. :-)

This story is set in the Mirai Time-line, roughly a eighty years after the androids were defeated.

Vegeta and Bulma are literally reincarnations of their former selves. In the Mirai timeline all the Z-Fighters are famous enough that it isn't strange for kids to be named after them, so their names come off as just a strange sort of coincidence to the characters (and it avoids reader confusion). Bulma and Vegeta look generally the same, or in Vegeta's case as close as he can get given that he's human. I couldn't make him Saiyan without having him be a decedent of either himself or of Goku. Since I can't really see Vegeta's personality developing without massively bad things happening to him so I wanted to keep his past distinct from the Son's and Briefs' past. Bulma's family background is not entirely dissimilar to her cannon background at 16, but her world is different, so she's got some new interests.

Goku jr. is not a reincarnation, just Goku's great, great grandson, he's not the character from the GT movie either, although he could be considered that character's Mirai counter-part. In my version of the Mirai Timeline after Trunks defeated the Androids Bulma rebuilt her spaceship, found New Namek, borrowed their Dragon Balls and found out there was a ten year limit on how long you could wait before wishing a person back to life. So they were able to save Gohan but none of the other Z-Fighters. After they started rebuilding Gohan met his version of Videl, they got married, had Pan, etc, etc. Goku jr. is more inspired by Goten than Goku, but he isn't really meant to be Goten either.

Vegeta Briefs is Trunk's youngest child. He doesn't have much in common with his namesake, outside of looks; nothing terribly traumatic has ever happened to him and his grandmother Bulma had more influence on his choices than his Saiyan blood.

Bunny Briefs is the daughter of one of Trunks' daughters. Both Pan and Trunks' daughters have passed on their family names rather than taken their husbands'. Gohan and Trunks, more than anyone else are this world's heroes, why would their descendants want to use any other family name?

This is my first attempt at anything approaching a 'high school fic', let me know if it's worth continuing.

* * *

Bulma squirmed on the uncomfortable chair outside the Principal's office at Orange Star High. Her transfer papers slid off her lap and scattered across the floor. A childish pout marred her pretty features as she scrambled after the papers. She knew getting a position in Capsule Corps' research division was a dream job for her dad but still having to transfer to a new school for her junior and senior years was just lame. She and her friends had so many things planned but instead here she was at a brand new school where she didn't know anyone.

The office door swung open, Bulma glanced up and froze. A surge of inexplicable, joyful recognition struck her dumb. "He was beautiful," she thought. His black hair was gelled into a series of stiff spikes and his eyes were almost as dark as his hair. He wasn't tall by any means, but he was well built and he carried himself with the grace of a top athlete. He glared out at the world with an expression of sullen anger on his face.

Bulma realized that she was staring and blushed. She grabbed the last of her paper and hopped to her feet. Self-consciously she tugged on a strand of long aqua-blue hair then tucked it behind her ear. She smoothed her skirt, sat back down and crossed her ankles in a lady-like manner. She tried to persuade herself to stop blushing.

"Itsuni-san?" The secretary asked as she took a second transfer file out of her basket. The boy nodded grudgingly. "Everything seems to be in order. If you'll just wait here the principal will see you shortly."

Bulma felt a giddy smile threatening to break out across her face as the boy took the seat next to hers. "New schools suck huh?" she said to break the ice. "I'm Bulma Okaeri, by the way."

"Vegeta Itsuni," the boy replied. After a momentary hesitation he offered her his hand.

"It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Okaeri-san?" a chastised looking girl asked as she left the Principal's office. "It's your turn."

"Thanks," Bulma said. She stood up then turned to Vegeta. "I hope we end up in the same home-room," she said.

The principal's office was a spartan room. "Okaeri-san, I'm Principal Mori, please take a seat."

Bulma handed the older woman her papers then sat down and fought the urge to fidget while Principal Mori looked the transfer papers over.

"You've been placed both in the accelerated science program and the advanced martial arts class, quite admirable."

"My dad's an engineer," Bulma said modestly. "He's spent a lot of time working with me. And... well... 'Never again' you know."

Principal Mori nodded. It hadn't been that many generations since the Android's reign of terror and the scars of two decades of oppression ran deep. When the Androids had finally been destroyed and they'd begun to rebuild humanity had found a driving ambition to never be caught helpless and unprepared again.

"Everything seems to be in order here. You'll be in Briefs-sensei's home-room, B-3. You're class representative should be here to show you around shortly."

Bulma caught a faint tightening in her new principal's expression and guessed that the class rep should have already been there.

They both heard the outer door of the office slam loudly. "Am I late? I'm not late yet, right?"a boisterous voice exclaimed.

"That would be Son-kun," the principal sighed. "He'll show you around the school and see that you know where your classes are."

"Thank you ma'am," Bulma said.

The principal nodded. "I hope you enjoy your time with us. Now if you could send Itsuni-san in?"

Bulma smiled and headed out to meet her new classmate.

A tall boy with an impossibly wild bird's nest of hair was gesturing emphatically as he spoke with the secretary. "There was a kitten you see," he explained.

"Vegeta-kun?" Bulma asked hoping that he wouldn't think she was being overly familiar. "It's your turn."

"Hn," the boy nodded in acknowledgment and slipped past her into the Principal's office. He shut the door behind him.

Principal Mori took his folder and sat it on the desk in front of her. "Please sit," she said quietly. "Itsuni-san, I know there were problems at your old school," she hesitated, a hint of pity crept into her voice. "And in your living arrangements. I hope Orange Star High will be a fresh start for you."

At the mention of his old school Vegeta's posture had begun to shift toward a defiant slouch but when Principal Mori mentioned his home problems Vegeta closed down completely, his face became a blank mask, his eyes focused on some point behind the principal's shoulder.

Principal Mori glanced down at the papers on her desk. "You placement scores were excellent. In light of that, I intend to ignore your previous academic record and place you in the accelerated science program. I believe you have the potential to do very well here, don't let your past hold you back."

Vegeta didn't respond.

"B-3 will be your home-room, with Briefs-sensei." Principal Mori sighed as Vegeta continued staring past her. "You're excused. Son-kun is waiting to show you and Okaeri-san around."

Vegeta turned sharply and marched out of the office.

"... And it was just a little kitten," Son was still explaining. "I was sure his mother was worried about him, so I had to find her and see them reunited before I could continue on to school. So you see, I didn't have any choice but to be late!"

The secretary sighed. "Fine, Son-kun. You had a good excuse. I'll be sure to mention that to your mother when I call her."

The tall boy gulped nervously. "You're still calling Mom?"

"I could call your grandmother if you prefer..." the secretary threatened.

The boy paled. "No, no, Mom's fine," he said.

He turned to Bulma and Vegeta. "Hi! I'm Son Goku, you class rep, pleased to meet you!" he said enthusiastically.

Bulma grinned. "Bulma Okaeri," she said. When Vegeta failed to follow suit she added. "And this is Vegeta Itsuni."

"Vegeta?" Goku asked. "Wow, what a coincidence. Our teacher's named Vegeta too. I guess it's not so unusual, there are two Kuririns in the school and half a dozen Gohans. But Vegeta-otooji, I mean Briefs-sensei, is actually THE Vegeta's grandson. Isn't that neat?"

"Son-kun, you wouldn't be related to THE Son Goku?" Bulma asked with a faintly ironic smile. It was impossible not to see the family resemblance.

The tall boy flushed. "Yeah, er, well, he was my great, great granddad," he muttered quickly. "Anyway, we've got a lot to see before class starts so we better get moving."

What came next was a whirlwind of activity. The gym, the vending machines, the lab facilities, the cafeteria, the library (where food wasn't allowed), an ice cream shop across the road from campus that was good for after-school snacks... And everywhere they went Goku was always racing off to drag someone over to introduce them.

Bulma found herself thinking of the boy as a puppy. A Saint Bernard puppy, big, friendly and amazingly energetic. Bulma imagined that he would be exhausting to be around for too long, but at the same time she couldn't help but like him.

As the tour went on Vegeta relaxed. Before long he was rolling his eyes at Goku's enthusiastic manner and eventually throwing in sardonic comments. Goku alternately ignored the comments or took them for sincere questions and answered them with due diligence, much to Vegeta's irritation.

A bell began tolling. Goku glanced down at his watch with a look of stunned disbelief. "Oh my gosh! We're going to be late for class!" he exclaimed and took off at a dead sprint.

Vegeta matched his speed and Bulma struggled not to be left behind. The three of them piled through the class doors just as the last echo of the bell faded.

"Son-kun, class begins at the same time every day," their instructor, a surprisingly youthful looking man with an odd, flame-like shock of black hair reprimanded mildly.

Goku pulled up and bowed formally. "Sorry, Uncle... I mean Briefs-sensei."

"Sit," Briefs-sensei ordered. "Class, we have two new students who will be joining us this year." He glanced at Bulma and Vegeta. Bulma was bent over, leaning her weight on her knees and gasping for breath. He turned to Vegeta. "Could you introduce yourself to the class?"

Vegeta stepped forward, everyone in the class stared at him curiously. "I'm Vegeta Itsuni," he announced.

The class waited expectantly for him to continue. The silence gained an uncomfortable edge.

"Isn't there anything else you'd like to add?" Briefs-sensei prompted.

"No," Vegeta stated.

"Your hobbies for example. Where you come from," Brief-sensei suggested.

"It's none of their business," Vegeta replied.

"Please?" Bulma wheezed.

"Hn," Vegeta sighed. The pleading look in the girl's eyes exerted a pull on him. It really wasn't so much that she was asking, just time to catch her breath.

"I'm trained to fight in the Demon style," Vegeta stated.

That started the class whispering amongst themselves. Demon style, the fighting style of Piccolo who had taught Son Gohan to fight who had taught Trunks Briefs, the hero who had been the one to defeat the Androids and free the planet. True Trunks' style had changed mysteriously shortly before his final victory over the androids, but Trunks had never taught that style to anyone outside of his family.

The Turtle style was the most widely practiced. During the Rebuilding it had been Master Muten Roshi, his old pupil the Ox King and the Ox King's daughter Son Chichi who had stepped forward when the people of Earth had begged for someone to prepare them, to give them a fighting chance if anything like the Androids happened again.

The style Son Gohan practiced had no beginning level. Gohan had been taught to fight sink or swim. The Demon style could only be taught to those who spent years building their strength through other styles or to those with immense natural talent. A junior in high school who had been trained in the Demon style almost certainly fell into the later category.

"How long have you trained in the Demon style?"

"Who was your Martial Arts sensei?"

"Have you fought in any tournaments?"

"Forget tournaments, have you fought in any Incidents?"

Vegeta glared to cover how uncomfortable he was as the class bombarded him with questions. No one would have questioned him at his pervious school, they were all too afraid of him. There'd been a few morons who'd followed him around and called themselves his gang. Disabusing them of their delusions would have granted them more importance than they deserved so he allowed them to do as they liked. He'd forgotten how to cope with people who weren't afraid of him.

Having caught her breath, it was Bulma's turn to come to Vegeta's rescue. She put her hand on his wrist to get his attention. Vegeta flushed at the contact, it occurred to him that it hadn't been particularly necessary for Bulma to touch him. Bulma smiled and he noticed just how blue her eyes were. Ever since he'd caught her staring at him in the office he'd felt a connection to her.

"Thanks for stalling for me," Bulma said.

"All right, Okaeri-san, it's your turn," Briefs-sensei said. He nodded toward an empty seat, giving Vegeta permission to retreat from the stage.

Bulma set aside her new school jitters and her regret at losing her old friends. She smiled brightly at the class. "Hi! I'm Bulma Okaeri. I'm from South City. We moved here 'cause my dad got a job with the Orange Star City division of Capsule Corp, he's an engineer. At my old school I was active with the Girl's League, the Martial Arts team and the Ultra-Light, Surface-to-Moon race craft design team. I hope to be just as active at Orange Star High and I look forward to getting to know you all."

A slight girl with curly black hair waved her hand excitedly. "Hi! I'm Bunny Briefs, OSHS's Girl's League president. We'd be happy to have you. You already had the misfortune of meeting Goku, he's the captain of the martial arts team. And Uncle Vegeta-sensei is the faculty advisor for the Surface-to-Moon club."

"Thanks," Bulma said. After a hesitant glance at Vegeta she took a seat by Bunny. She couldn't spend all her time chasing after a boy, no matter how dreamy he was, she needed to make friends too.

"Okay class, that's it for the day's excitement," Briefs-sensei said. He held up a sheaf of papers. "Now, lets see how much you've forgotten over break."

A chorus of groans greeted his announcement but soon the class was silent except for the scratching of pencil on paper.

Bulma remembered her dad raving about OSHS's science program, now she knew why. If not for all the extracurricular projects she'd worked on with her dad the test would have been a real killer.

Out of the corner of her eye Bulma saw a blur of motion. "Owie!!" Goku exclaimed as a white board pen bounced off the side of his head.

"This is a test Son-kun, no whispering," Brief-sensei stated.

"But I wasn't cheating!" Goku protested. "It wasn't even about the test!"

A second pen took flight, this one struck Goku squarely between the eyes. "Goku?" Briefs-sensei asked in a deceptively mild tone. "How many times have we discussed not distracting your classmates while they're working?"

"But it was important!" Goku whined.

"Answer the question Goku Jr."

Goku looked thoughtful for a moment. Then he shrugged cheerfully. "I forget. I didn't know I was supposed to be keeping count."

Briefs-sensei stalked toward Goku's seat. "Quite a few times, wouldn't you say?" he asked.

"Yeah, I guess," Goku admitted.

"But here you are, still talking in class," Briefs-sensei said. "Do you think a special detention sparring session might help the message sink in?"

Goku's eyes widened comically. "No?" he replied hopefully.

"I think it would," Briefs-sensei said. "Meet me above the school as soon as the lunch period begins. Oh, and Goku, I have a feeling that this will take the whole period."

"No lunch?" Goku whimpered.

"Is this normal?" Bulma scribbled on a piece of scratch paper. She tilted it toward Bunny.

While Bulma and Vegeta had been staring at the spectacle the rest of the class had been making a show of looking studious.

Bunny's eyes darted toward Briefs-sensei, seeing that he was totally focused on Goku she quickly scribbled. "With Goku? Yeah." Then she crumpled the note and turned back to her test. Bulma got the message and did like-wise.

For the remainder of the period Goku remained a model student, attentive, quiet, his eyes never strayed form the board. But when the next teacher came in Goku's natural exuberance reasserted itself.

He was constantly asking his neighbors for help, or offering help himself. He asked about what everyone had done over the break and about their plans for the weekend. His seat was too far from Bulma's for conversation but he still managed to pass her three different notes during the second period alone.

Bunny rolled her eyes in exasperation. "Just ignore him," she instructed. "Paying attention to Goku is like feeding a stray."

Bulma blinked in surprise, Bunny's attitude toward Goku showed a marked contrast with her general air of cheerful friendliness.

While Bulma sat half-way across the room from Goku, Vegeta's seat was just one row back and slightly to the left. Vegeta determinedly ignored the other boy's frequent overtures of friendship for almost two hours before exploding. "Don't you ever shut up?" he demanded furiously.

Goku looked moderately bewildered, "Why are you yelling?" he whispered. "You're gonna get us in trouble."

"Us, Son-san?" the teacher asked. "I believe Itsuni-san's efforts to remain on task are quite commendable."

Goku chuckled and scratched at the back of his head. "I'm sorry Priori-sensei. I guess I didn't hear you when you started lecturing."

"Buckets, hall, and stand where I can see that you aren't talking to anyone," the teacher instructed.

"Not talk to anyone? But what if someone talks to me?" Goku asked. "They'd think I was being rude if I didn't talk back."

"I'm sure this hypothetical person will survive Son-san."

After about ten minutes Bulma noticed that Goku had put a unique spin on the concept of holding buckets. He had flipped into a one-handed hand-stand, one brimming full bucket balanced on the soles of his feet while he held the other in his free hand. While she watched Goku bit his lip in concentration, he pushed off with his supporting hand then tried to trade the bucket over to that hand and catch himself. To Bulma's shock he managed to complete the maneuver, but not smoothly enough. The bucket balanced on his feet over-turned soaking both the boy and the surrounding hall.

Priori-sensei sighed but otherwise refused to acknowledge Goku's antics. Goku flipped back to his feet and shook the excess water out of his hair before running outside. A few seconds later he returned with a newly filled bucket. A few moments after that the secretary arrived with a mop and a stern expression, both for Goku.

Goku disappeared as soon as the lunch period began, presumably he was doing his detention with Briefs-sensei. Bulma took her lunch and went to sit by Vegeta. Once she was there she found herself at a loss for what to say to him. But the rest of the class had plenty of questions for both of them. Vegeta seemed grateful that Bulma was there to keep his classmates from focusing their curiosity fully on him.

By the time lunch ended Bulma had told their classmates how OSHS compared to her old high school thus far: The class-size was smaller, at OSHS the science and math programs were more rigorous, the English teacher droned more. The walk to school was a little longer, but she didn't mind, the exercise was good for her.

She explained that they seen her at the last District Martial Arts Tournament because she'd only managed to unseat her old school's second a few months ago, but she had been in the audience and she'd been very impressed by OSHS's team. She'd been surprised when Goku had been eliminated.

Several of the students snickered at that.

"Goku was slacking in his studies," Bunny explained. "His mom was going to pull him off the team if he didn't get at least a B-minus in geometry. He pulled an all nighter to get his studying done, he was half asleep at the tournament, at best."

Bulma's eyes widened, half-asleep and he'd taken third place.

She was also asked about her favorite color: teal, ice cream flavor: bubble-gum and her blood type: O-pos.

Vegeta admitted to having participated in a few local tournament when he'd been younger. He didn't say why he'd quit, where he was from or what his parents did. He said he liked silence and disliked busy-bodies. The rest of the class got his message and left him alone after that.


	2. Gym Class

**Second Chances**

**Chapter Two: Gym Class**

**Disclaimer: **Characters are the property of Akira Toriyama, I'm just borrowing them for some non-profit fun.

* * *

Seconds before the bell and the end of the lunch period Goku reappeared. He looked no worse for wear but calmer than he had been. The chance to burn off some of his over-abundant energy had apparently done him good and the afternoon classes passed almost peacefully.

At three o' clock the teacher announced, "Those of you who qualify for Brief-sensei's beyond-black-belts class are excused to go to the gym."

"Yippeee!!!" Goku cheered as he jumped up. Vegeta, Bulma and Bunny left their seats at a more sedate pace and followed Goku out of the classroom. As they made their way to the gym students from the other classes fell in with them. By the time they hit the locker rooms their numbers had swollen to sixteen in total.

The looks they shot at the two new-comers in their midst were curious but with an over-tone of anticipation. They didn't bombard the pair with questions. Bulma got the feel that, here and now, with this group, their most pressing questions would be answered when the training session started. Thus they chose not to waste time with lesser matters.

At the locker rooms the group split in two, the twelve boys taking one door and the four girls the other.

In the girl's locker room Bunny quickly introduced Bulma to the other two girls while they changed.

In the boy's locker room Vegeta turned his back on the others and peeled off his shirt. The set of his shoulders was rigid as he anticipated the reaction to come. He felt the weight of their stares impaling him anew as they noticed the scar.

"Were you in an Incident?" someone asked.

Vegeta remembered concrete crumbling beneath him from his body's impact. The steel rebar inside the concrete hadn't given way so easily. A line of fire running through his chest and the rest of his body oddly numb.

"_I will always find you," the high pitched voice came to him as if from a great distance. Vegeta wondered distantly where his step-father had gone, it had been him just a moment ago, but the voice, the voice was the one from his nightmares, the one from the explosion that killed his parents, the phantom. "Always. What ever you build for yourself I will tear down. You will always be my creature Vegeta, always." _

_He hung there like a bug on a pin. His feet dangling several inches above the ground. The weight of his body gradually forcing the rebar through his flesh. It was like being cut in half in slow motion._

Vegeta remembered knowing he had to push himself off the rebar before the damage to his lungs became fatal. He remembered his limbs refusing to obey even the most simple of commands. He remembered waking up in a hospital nearly three weeks later.

"Leave it alone guys," Goku said with uncommon seriousness. "Some Incidents aren't any good to talk about." He though of the things he'd read about in his history books that somehow had never come up in his Great Grandpa Gohan's stories. Vegeta's jerky movements as he pulled his tee shirt on and covered up the mass of fresh scar tissue on his back reminded Goku of the way Gohan had always tensed up when he thought about the first few months after the Androids came, when the Z-Fighters had been dying.

Briefs-sensei noted that the boys were unusually subdued as they left the locker room. The four girls were chatting amicably. Okaeri-san seemed well on her way to integrating herself into the group. Itsuni-san, on the other hand, seemed to have succeeded only in distancing himself from his classmates.

"Okay everyone, warm up," Brief-sensei ordered and the little group spread out across the gym.

"Wanna pair up?" Bunny asked Bulma.

Bulma nodded they started a series of assisted stretches.

While the class stretched Briefs-sensei continue. I'll make-up new calisthenics programs for everyone once I've seen how diligent you were over the break."

Goku grinned and bounced lightly on his toes. Several other students groaned.

Once the class settled into their routines Briefs-sensei started setting sparring partners. "Goku, Bunny, could the two of you evaluate Itsuni-san and Okaeri-san?" he asked.

Then he turned to Bulma and Vegeta. "This class is for everyone in the school who classifies as beyond black belt. The students range from third degree black belts up through S-class fighters. I'd like to get a better idea of where you two fall in that range so I know who it will be most advantageous to pair you up with later. I do my best t make sure you'll spend equal time with sparring partners just above and just below your current level. We're all here to help each other become the best fighters possible."

The foursome nodded. Along with the rest of the class they broke into pairs and spread out to different mats.

"No ki-blasts today," Briefs-sensei shouted. "I want to see straight sparring."

Bulma and Bunny bowed to each other then settled into their stances. Bunny gestured for Bulma to come at her. Tentatively Bulma began testing Bunny's defenses.

Bulma was completely intimidated by the realization she was up against a scion of the famous Briefs family. Bunny's grandfather was THE Trunks Briefs, the man who'd liberated their world from the androids.

Bunny smiled warmly. "Don't worry, just show me what you can do," she said.

Gradually Bunny's easy manner relaxed Bulma and the pair fell into a graceful exchange.

Bulma's style depended heavily on her speed and making tactical strikes to disable her opponent. Bunny refrained from simply overwhelming Bulma with the raw power that was the birthright of her Saiyan blood. There was a clean efficiency to both girl's movements that made watching them a pleasure.

In another corner of the gym Vegeta and Goku squared off.

"So after class a bunch of us like going to that ice cream place I showed you this morning," Goku chattered as he took his place on the mats.

"Finally," Vegeta said as he settled into his stance.

"Huh?" Goku looked puzzled.

Vegeta shot forward and caught Goku with a stunning blow to the solar plexus.

The air exploded out of Goku's lungs and he staggered backwards. He barely stopped himself from stepping out of bounds.

Vegeta smirked. "Finally, I can shut you up."

Goku coughed. "You're fast," he said sounding as pleased as possible considering his lack of breath.

"Hn," Vegeta sneered. This time when he pressed his attack Goku countered.

"I thought you said you practiced Demon style," Goku commented with a frown. He didn't seem to notice that, even while he was countering Vegeta's attack he was still being forced steadily backward.

Vegeta leapt up, over Goku's defenses, and delivered a stunning double-legged kick. Goku brought his arms up in a cross-arm block but he wasn't able to absorb the force of the blow and ended up on his ass and out of bounds.

"I said I studied Demon style, not that I practiced it," Vegeta stated haughtily.

Goku hopped to his feet, he was grinning. "You really are good," he announced. "But Briefs-sensei is going to say I didn't do a very good job of evaluating you. Best two out of three falls? I promise to take it seriously," Goku wheedled.

Vegeta rolled his eyes. "Fine," he said in a patronizing tone.

Whispers flew across the gym, spreading word of Goku's promise to 'take it seriously'.

Goku paused at the edge of the mat. For several moments he closed his eyes, his expression was almost meditative. When he stepped into the ring his face was calm and collected but his eyes were bright with repressed excitement.

This time Goku took the offensive.

While still pretending to focus on their own matches the rest of the class was covertly watching Goku and Vegeta. When Vegeta managed to maintain his defenses in the face of a 'serious' offensive effort from Goku and even managed to sneak in a few blows of his own the class gave up any pretense of minding their own business. Briefs-sensei was too busy staring at Vegeta to notice.

Bunny frowned. "That's so weird," she said to Bulma. "Itsuni-san's style looks like a variation of my family's style."

"What's so weird about that?" Bulma asked as she watched the two boys exchange furious attacks with fascination.

"Grandpa Trunks said never to teach that style to anyone outside of the family," Bunny explained. "He didn't think his dad would like it."

"His dad?" Bulma asked. "I thought Son Gohan taught Trunks. Didn't his dad die during the first year of the Android occupation? I thought Trunks was just a baby then."

Bunny blushed. Her family had chosen to keep secret the time travel and alternate reality parts of the story of how the Androids had been defeated. First because her Great Grandmother Bulma had worried about the danger of people misusing time travel. Second because they'd worried everyone would think they were nuts, talking about time travel and stuff. In fact most people believed that the reason Son Gohan had disappeared for years had been because he'd been recovering from severe injuries, not because he'd been dead until Bulma and Trunks Briefs built a spaceship and traveled to New Namek to borrow their Dragon Balls, unfortunately they'd learned that people could only be wished back if they'd been dead less than ten years, so Gohan had been the only Z-Fighter they'd been able to save.

Bunny quietly decided silence was golden and didn't reply to Bulma's questions. She hoped that Goku and Vegeta would put on a good enough show to make Bulma forget she'd ever asked. Bunny snuck a glance at Bulma and bit back a giggle. Bulma was all but drooling as she watched Vegeta. Bunny turned back to the match with a faint frown, she was pretty sure it was Vegeta that Bulma was drooling over.

As the match intensified a faint halo of ki began forming around both boys. The floor became less of a place to stand than a spring board to kick off of once and awhile before returning to their mostly ariel battle.

Goku evaluated Vegeta carefully and when the other boy launched his attack Goku ducked under it and nailed Vegeta with a boot to the gut. Their combined momentum added to the force of the blow and Vegeta was tossed bodily out of the ring.

He only stopped after colliding with several of his classmates. The whole group went down in a heap. When Vegeta emerged from the tangle of limbs there was blood dripping from the corner of his mouth.

Goku's eyes widened in horror. Then Vegeta wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and grinned. The baring of blood-streaked teeth made him look almost feral. "So you aren't all talk," he said.

Goku relaxed at the realization that the other boy wasn't hurt. Then he made a hurried effort to reclaim his 'battle' mind-set before Vegeta made it back to the ring.

When the spar resumed Goku's lack of focus was telling for the first few minutes. But he held on until he'd settled back into the rhythm of the fight.

As they fought Vegeta found himself grinning fiercely. There was something so right about this fight, as if he'd been waiting for it all his life.

The battle stretched on and the boys began attempting more and more insane stunts to gain an advantage over the other. Both had long since forgotten Briefs-sensei's ban on ki-maneuvers and Vegeta was seriously considering finding out how Goku would handle a ki-blast. Vegeta only abstained because he didn't want to risk collapsing the gym on top of his classmates.

Goku spun to one side and grabbed Vegeta's fist as it flew through the space he'd just vacated. Even as Goku used his momentum to turn his hold into a throw Vegeta spun around with Goku and drove his other fist into Goku's kidney.

Goku released Vegeta's wrist with a grunt of pain. Then shifted his weight to launch a side-kick. Vegeta, not expecting such a quick recovery, was caught unprepared. The kick caught him in squarely in the chest and knocked him out of bounds.

For a second or two Goku just stood there. Then his ki-aura died out and his familiar, friendly grin came back. He offered Vegeta a hand up. "So, do you want to get ice cream after class with the group?" he asked.

Vegeta hesitated a moment then accepted the hand up. "I have a job after school," he stated.

"That sucks," Goku replied. "That was a really good fight."

Briefs-sensei added. "I just might have to pair the two of you up regularly. It isn't often that I see Goku concentrating in class."

Vegeta grinned slightly.

He felt the weight of someone's eyes on him and turned to see Bulma turning away, her cheeks stained a bright red. He continued watching her and after a moment she returned his glance with a warm smile.

It occurred to Vegeta that things might just work out at this new school.


	3. After School

**Second Chances**

**Chapter Three: After School**

**Disclaimer: **Characters are the property of Akira Toriyama, I'm just borrowing them for some non-profit fun.

* * *

Once the last bell of the day rang Vegeta quickly collected his homework and left for work. Regardless of what Goku thought, having a job did not 'suck' in Vegeta's opinion.

Having the ability to get work met successfully arguing for emancipation instead of spending another two years in the foster care system. It meant freedom. He wasn't dependent on anyone. He didn't answer to anyone. No one had power over him. Unconsciously Vegeta rubbed at the scar under his shirt then scowled when he realized what he was doing.

When Vegeta arrived at the construction site he stowed his school things in his locker, changed into work cloths and went to report to his supervisor. Given his age and lack of experience it would have been difficult for Vegeta to find a job like this one, but the Reconstruction had shown everyone how top-level fighters could make good use of their abilities in other venues besides battle and fighting had always been second nature for Vegeta.

"Itsuni! We saved some demolition for you," the supervisor shouted.

Vegeta grinned, demo was another of those things that just came naturally to him. "What needs breaking, Tsukuri-san?"

"Over there," Tsukuri said with a nod toward an older apartment building.

Vegeta nodded. He took to the air lightly. Once he was in position he began collecting his power. As the ki within him built to a crescendo he felt a flash of deja vu. It should have been easier. It should have been child's play to generate a blast strong enough to reduce the whole planet to rubble.

Vegeta brought his hands together. "Gallic Gun!" Power washed down his arms like acid, corrosive, almost more than his body could bare. In an instant the twenty story building simply ceased to exist.

"I love fireworks."

Dizzily Vegeta glanced around to see who'd spoken. No one was there. His power spent he sank to the ground in a barely controlled fall.

"Damnit kid, you don't have to get it done in one blast!" Tsukuri-san exclaimed as he ran over. He caught Vegeta's arm and determinedly steered the unsteady boy to a bench. "You've got to know your own limits! I can point to something and say break that, move this but I can't tell whether you can lift one ton or two. The ones like you, you're practically a breed apart. I don't know what you're capable of. You're a damned useful brat to have around. But not if you're going to half kill yourself trying to take on too much!"

"I'm fine now," Vegeta protested.

"Okay. But for the rest of th day you're on beams over at the 2nd street site," Tsukuri instructed.

Vegeta nodded. Beams were far from his favorite task. Their size made them awkward to carry and no one needed enough of them at any one time to tax his strength. He got the notion that very fact might be the reason he was being told to take the task. Maybe he shouldn't have finished the fun bit so quickly.

With a look of resignation Vegeta got to work.

* * *

Bulma savored her Ice Cream Sunday and not being the center of attention for the moment. Her newness had been completely trumped by Goku and Vegeta's spar.

"You really weren't holding back?" one of the boys, Bulma thought his name was Yamcha or maybe Kuririn; he'd definitely been named for one of the Z-fighters; asked. It had to have been the dozenth time someone had asked some variation on that same question.

Goku sighed. "Really, truly, cross-my-heart-hope-to-die. Vegeta is as good of a fighter as I am. I wasn't holding back."

"It's just hard to believe, you and Bunny are just unnatural," Yamcha-or-maybe-Kuririn insisted. He glanced over at Bunny. "No offense Bunny-chan."

"None taken Yajirobi," Bunny replied. Bulma smacked her forehead. Yajirobi, that was his name. "But get it straight, I'm not 'unnatural' I'm one-eighth inhuman, Goku's one-sixteenth. Nothing unnatural about aliens."

Bulma choked on her cherry-topping. Sure everyone knew Son Goku and Vegeta-Ouji had been aliens, but it was still shocking to hear her new classmate and friend casually joke about not being fully human.

Another of the boys, Paperi, said "But man, you should have seen that scar of his. The front was worse than the back."

"Exit wound," someone else contributed.

"Still Goku says he's S-class. You want to think about someone who can get that bad a hit on an S-Class fighter?"

"Guys, I wish you'd forget about that," Goku objected. "Didn't you notice how much it bothered Vegeta to have you all staring at him?"

"It looked pretty fresh, not like the other scars he had, maybe only a few months."

Goku slapped the table, the loud bang silenced the group. "No more speculating and no gossiping," he ordered. "I'm saying that as team captain of the Martial Arts Club. Vegeta's a real good fighter, I don't want you driving him off prying into his personal life, 'kay?"

From the startled looks and quick acquiescence Bulma gathered that Goku didn't lay down the law very often.

After a few moments of silence, Yajirobi grinned, "You just want someone besides Briefs-sensei who can keep up with you," he teased.

"Hell yeah," Goku answered quickly. "Did you see him fight? I haven't that much fun since Dad caught me driving without a licence!"

Bunny groaned, "This is why his mother is the disciplinarian in their family; he only enjoys it when Uncle Kuririn goes on the war-path."

Bulma glanced at Bunny questioningly, she was a little surprised that the whole team seemed so good-natured about Goku implying that no one except their sensei could match his level.

Bunny shrugged, "Can't argue with reality," she said very quietly. "Goku competed in his first World's Strongest Tournament when he was three, Grandpa Trunks and his Great Grandpa Gohan insisted on putting him in the adult division against all advice. It didn't work out so well."

"Well naturally, a toddler against-" Bulma began.

"No you don't get it," Bunny interrupted. "Goku's sort of a throw-back. He nearly killed his first opponent because he just didn't realize how fragile humans were. They should have just skipped him past the prelims to make sure he didn't go up against anyone who wasn't on a high enough level to deal with him. No one cares that he holds back because he's simply too far beyond anyone else in the group to do anything else. We just wish he weren't so totally ADHD, half the time we have competitions I swear he forgets he's supposed be fighting and tries making friends with his opponents instead."

While Bulma and Bunny had been talking the general conversation had shifted back to school, classmates and the like.

Bulma finished off her Sunday. "It's been great getting to know everyone," she said. "Thanks for having me along. Still I'd better get home and get started on all that homework Briefs-sensei assigned.

Goku and Bunny groaned at the reminder. They certainly didn't have the option of slacking off in their uncle's class.

"We'll see you tomorrow," Bunny said. "Oh, and Girl's League meets the first Tuesday of every month, for about an hour after school. I'll introduce you to some of the other girls during lunch tomorrow."

"Thanks!" Bulma said and happily waved goodbye to her new friends.

* * *

"Dad?" Brief-sensei called as he walked into his childhood home.

He found his father sitting on the back porch. Briefs-sensei winced a little at how old his father looked. Not so long ago they'd believed Trunks and Gohan were practically immortal. They'd both still been in prime physical condition well into their nineties. But once old age had gotten a grasp on them it had set in with a vengeance. At one hundred and two, Trunks looked his age, and then some.

"There were two new students added to my Martial Arts class," Briefs-sensei remarked.

Trunks squinted at his son curiously.

"Strangest coincidence, they're names are Bulma and Vegeta, and I swear there's already a connection between them. Bulma Okaeri, her dad works for Capsule Corp by the way and Vegeta Itsuni, he's human of course but I'm already almost certain he's one of the New Type," Briefs-sensei continued.

"Oh?" Trunks quarried.

"He kept up with Goku jr. I can barely get that kid to focus on fighting and not chattering in tournaments. Itsuni-san was a real challenge for him," Briefs-sensei explained.

"That is saying something," Trunks remarked. "Saiyan blood runs strong in that boy."

Briefs-sensei nodded, Goku jr. was the only child less than half-Saiyan who'd been born with a tail.

"What's he like?" Trunks asked.

Trunks and Gohan had defended the Earth for decades. Every year there had been more and more able human fighters assisting them. But sometimes raw power was the only thing that could turn a battle and Saiyan blood would eventually be diluted to nothing. Then the New Types had started cropping up. Rare humans with extraordinary powers were beginning to appear. Trunks was certain that eventually the New Types would discover their own version of the Super Saiyan transformation.

"What's Vegeta Itsuni like?" Briefs-sensei sighed. "He's hard to read, withdrawn, uncommunicative. He's been in foster-care since he was six. I dug around a little and found his parents died in a car-wreck, under suspicious circumstances, two years before that. The kid was in the car when it happened, reporters called it a miracle that he survived. To me it looks like the kid had some innate ki-abilities and I'm guessing I'm not the only one who noticed; he says he's trained in Demon-style."

Briefs-sensei hesitated. "But here's where it gets weird. Watching him fight, it's like he's trying to recreate your Dad's style from scratch."

* * *

"Mom, Dad, I'm home!" Bulma called. She noted that her mom had made a lot of progress in getting boxes unpacked. The new house was starting to support familiar objects.

"How was your new school dear?" her mother asked. "Did you make any friends?"

"Yeah, I think I did," Bulma said. "Everyone in the Advanced Martial Arts Class was cool. Bunny and Goku are in my home-room too. And Vegeta, he's new, like me." Bulma added dreamily.

"Vegeta huh? So you met a boy?"

"Mother!"

"I hope you weren't too distracted by boys to tell me how classes went," her father remarked.

Bulma hefted her very full bookbag. "You're going to love my teacher Daddy. Briefs-sensei gave me enough homework to satisfy even you."

"If you have that much homework you'd best get started," her mother remarked. "Dinner will be ready in an hour."

* * *

"Hey Mom! Guess what? I finished all my chores without you even reminding me!" Goku shouted. "Wood chopped, animals fed and look I'm knocking the mud off my shoes before coming into the entryway!"

His mother planted her fists on her hips. "I suppose you think that will make me forget about a certain call I received?"

Goku grinned shame-facedly and scratched at the back of his skull. "Didn't work huh?"

"Oh Goku, it is your first day back from break. Your first day! And I'm already getting calls from your school?"

"But Mom! Did she tell you about the kitten?" Goku protested.

"Goku Jr., a stray cat is not an adequate excuse for neglecting your education!"

"Give the boy a break Vidalia," Goku's father said. "He's just too saiyan to be happy cooped up in a class room all day."

"Husband, if you and Trunks-san had your way, I swear he'd be running around the wild without a single though in his head!" Vidalia declared.

"It's okay Dad, I like school, really. I get to talk to my friends. There are new people to spar with."

"And occasionally you squeeze in a few moments of actual paying attention to your classes," Vidalia interjected. "Goku, you've got a bruise, don't tell me you already had a sparring detention with Vegeta-sensei on top of a call home?"

"This, oh no," Goku began. "Well, yes, I had detention but-"

His father sighed. "I knew I shouldn't have let you skip your morning spar, even if you did have responsibilities as your Class Representative."

"BUT!!" Goku interrupted loudly. "I got this sparring with a new kid in the class. It was totally, unbelievable cool Dad! We did best out of three falls, because he completely caught me off guard on the first fall."

Vidalia and Kuririn stared at their son in shock.

"Okay, after the first hit I should have realized he was good. But it was school, no one's that good at school. Well, except Bunny when it's that time of the month."

"Son Goku jr.!" Vidalia exclaimed reprovingly.

"Sorry Mom, but it's the truth. Anyways, so he socks me, which is how I got the bruise, and I still don't believe he's for real and I don't even notice he's edging me off the mat until BAM! I'm down, his point! Then I get serious, like I'm fighting at the World's Tournament Finals or against a fighter from the family. I get the next point, but when he gets up he's bloody. Which freaks me out, 'cause, you know, here I am thinking he can handle it but then maybe not and well you know."

His parents looked very worried.

"BUT! But he's grinning. He just bit the inside of his mouth or something. I mean he's bloody, but he's not freaked at all, he grinning. I thought I was pretty much the only one ever who gets more into a fight if the other guy manages to bloody me."

Vidalia winced. There was no part of her that could understand her son's flat-out love of the most vicious of spars, even if it was her blood that made him so.

"So the blood actually throws me more than him. 'Cause it's not my blood and I've never fought him before so I'm not real sure of what he can take. But I pull it together and we're both really on, going for the last point, doing pretty much anything that won't bring down the gym to get it. I won, but barely. And Uncle Vegeta says we're a good match up and he wants us to pair up regularly. So I'll get to fight him all the time! I can't wait for gym tomorrow!"

"Does your new friend have a name?" Kuririn asked.

"Oh yeah, it's Vegeta Itsuni," Goku replied. "Which is funny, because he fights a little like Uncle Vegeta too. Only more so, it's like Uncle Vegeta's style should be if he didn't try to clean up all the really vicious bits."

Kuririn shook his head. His son generally acted so scatter-brained, it always shocked him when he was reminded of how observant Goku could be. He'd trained with Trunks for years before he'd even noticed that the Briefs' style was modified and he only knew what was missing because Trunks had explained it to him.

"So, when's dinner?" Goku asked. "I'm starving!"

* * *

"I'm home," Bunny yelled. Her voice echoed.

She kicked off her shoes and dropped her backpack by the door. If not for the things Bunny had dropped the entry hall would have looked like a show room from a museum.

Then Bunny made her way to the kitchen. She opened both doors of the giant refrigerator and peered inside. "Lets see, what's for dinner," she said to herself. She picked out two sealed packages. "Am I in the mood for spaghetti or teriyaki? I think spaghetti." She popped the whole package into a compact device bearing the Capsule Corp Logo and set the timer.

Bunny glanced toward the ceiling. "Dial Mom," she said.

After two rings the call was answered. "Bunny-chan, your mother's in her office, I'll patch you right through."

"Thanks Memo-san," Bunny replied as she took her dinner out.

"Bunny."

"Hi Mom, how's work?" Bunny asked.

"Business as usual, just a small meltdown on one of the production lines."

"My sympathies."

"How was school?"

"Two new faces, same old Goku," Bunny replied.

"I'll send condolences to your Uncle. I never could see why he wanted to teach instead of coming to work for Capsule Corp. So tell me about these new faces?"

"Well," Bunny began grinning. "Bulma wants to join Girl's League."

Her mother laughed. "Did you let her leave school without getting that in writing, or in blood?"

"Mother! We may be a small group, but we are proud. Besides, Bulma approached me, there's no reason for me to start breaking out extreme methods yet."

"And the second?"

"I'm sure Uncle's already told Grandpa Trunks all about him. Finally they've got someone they'll trust to back Goku in a real fight. I love the both of them, but really they can be a couple of chauvinistic pigs when it comes to serious fighting. They act like I'm no good for anything but tournaments just because I'm a female."

Her mother made a sympathetic sound. Then she changed the subject. "Have you got any homework?"

"I have Uncle Vegeta for a teacher don't I?" Bunny replied.

"Well, don't leave it for the last minute. You know you never get anything accomplished when you're at your father's."

Bunny grimaced. "Yes Mother. I'll see you in the morning?"

"I'd never miss breakfast with you, no matter how hectic things are here at work."

* * *

Vegeta juggled grocery bags while he tried to punch in the security code for his apartment building. The lock clicked as it released and he swung the heavy alloy-mesh gate open. Vegeta knew it wasn't enough to keep anyone truly dangerous out, but if they powered up enough to take out the door they'd wake him up as well. Then he'd be ready for them. He wouldn't be caught unaware again. No matter what form they came after him with this time.

He jogged up to the third floor. The apartment building was a converted hotel. The hall was barren, dingy and ill-lit but it was cheap and reasonably defensible.

As he walked down the hall he rearranged his bags again to free the other hand so he could dig his keys out of his pocket.

The key was in the lock before he really even glanced at his door.

Then the groceries hit the floor. Vegeta threw himself backwards. With his back against the far wall of the hallway he dropped into a defensive crouch. His eyes scanned the hall for enemies.

But there was no one to be seen. Just three words hacked viciously into his door: "Shouldn't have run."


	4. Haunted

**Second Chances**

**Chapter Four: Haunted**

**Disclaimer: **Premise and characters belong to Akira Toriyama, I'm just borrowing them for a little non-profit fun.

* * *

"Mom, where's the cordless?" Bulma called.

"There's a phone in the kitchen dear," her mother replied.

"But- I'm calling Bets! It's private!" Bulma whined.

"Yes dear, your father and I are just dying to listen to you and Betsy gossiping about boys for hours on end," her mother replied teasingly.

Bulma gave her mother an evil look. "Where is the cordless?" she repeated.

Her mother gestured toward the various boxes that were still awaiting organization. "Somewhere," she replied succinctly.

Grumbling under her breath, Bulma unhooked the phone from the wall, collected as much cord as she could and hauled the phone around the corner and down the hall toward the laundry. Then she dialed her oldest friend's number.

"Bulma! What took you so long?" Bets demanded, answering on the second ring.

"Homework," Bulma replied. "You knew my parents' rules."

"On your first day of school!" Bets exclaimed. "You poor thing."

"Well, my new homeroom and science teacher, Briefs-sensei, is enthusiastic," Bulma explained, grinning a little.

"Briefs? As in Vegeta Briefs? The guy you've had a crush on since you saw him on TV when you were_ five_?" Bets squealed. "So, tell me right now, is he as gorgeous n person as we always though he was?"

"Err, well, I didn't really notice," Bulma admitted.

"YOU. DIDN'T. NOTICE?" Bets cried. "You've had a crush on him since you were five! Do you remember how long you made me spend helping you look for pictures of him on the internet? Compared to the rest of his family he almost never makes public appearances."

"Well, he's a teacher. He seems to have pretty exacting standards, but he's nice about it," Bulma offered half-heartedly.

There was a long silence from the phone, Bulma could picture her old friend staring at her aghast. See her slowly turning things over in her mind. She waited for Bets to reach her conclusion.

"Nice, huh? Aka Bulma-speak for boring?" Bets replied. "Still... I suppose I should tell Chet not to wait for your call?"

"Chet? Kami, I totally forgot," Bulma groaned.

"I told you long distance relationships don't work," Bets scolded. "You haven't even been gone two weeks and you already forgot about poor Chet. Don't call him, you'll just be prolonging the inevitable. So tell me about this new guy of yours... No wait, let me tell you: His hair's spiked up."

"I am not that predictable!" Bulma protested.

"Tell me it isn't," Bets laughed.

"Oh all right," Bulma admitted. "Yes, and it's black, absolute ebony. And he's got these incredible eyes, dark and intense."

"Like Chet?" Bets remarked. "You always said his eyes were his best feature."

"No, not really- well sort of, but Vegeta's are better, Vegeta Itsuni." Bulma stammered. "And he's incredibly graceful, predatory. Watching him spar, I've never seen anyone like him."

"Not even Raymund?" Bets asked. He'd been their Martial Arts Club's team captain when they'd been freshman and he'd gone pro after he'd graduated.

"Not even Raymund," Bulma said dismissing her old crush.

"He's not tall," Bets stated with certainty.

"What? I hate getting a crick in my neck when I'm kissing a guy," Bulma said.

"You're so weird Bulma," Bets replied. "Most girls won't date a guy who's shorter than they are, you won't consider anyone who's more than an inch or two taller than you."

"He's, well he's got a sense of humor, but with an edge so sharp it leaves you bleeding." Bulma giggled as she remember Vegeta's efforts to employ sarcasm against Goku's overwhelming cheerfulness. "Unless you're incredibly thick skinned. Do you remember Jeremy and Sals?"

"From second grade?" Bets laughed. "Oh jeeze, how much time did you and Jeremy spend in detention? You two wouldn't stop insulting each other, it drove Robertson-sensei insane."

"She was such a stick in the mud, we were having fun," Bulma remarked.

"Bulma?" Bets exclaimed. "Are you telling me this guy is like, like an amalgamation of every guy you've liked or even crushed on since forever?"

"No!" Bulma protested. Then she stopped, her eyes widened and she almost dropped the phone. "No way. That's- You're going to think I'm crazy."

"Now you have to tell me," Bets said.

"Vegeta isn't an amalgamation of them. They- as impossible as this sounds- They reminded me of him. Bets, I knew him the moment I saw him. Well, no details, nothing concrete, but I knew him. I've been- I've been looking for him I think."

"That is so romantic. Complete and total mush-brained nonsense, but romantic. You're totally head over heels aren't you?" Bets said.

"My feet are firmly on the ground," Bulma laughed. "I just know when I find what I want."

* * *

Vegeta spent hours searching the building. He checked every entrance for signs of forced entry. He strained his senses to their limits trying to find a trace of anyone who didn't belong. He found nothing.

Slowly, he trudged back to his apartment. He collected his spilt groceries. Then he spent a moment glaring at the door. 'I didn't run,' he thought. 'I just left.'

Vegeta knew he should tell the police. This was proof that it hadn't been his last foster-father who'd left him for dead that day.

Th police though he was confused, that blood-loss and trauma had caused him to imagine things. They told him his foster-father's clothes had been saturated with his blood, that his finger-prints had been all over the site. Most damningly, they'd found his prints on the wall where Vegeta had been impaled. And Vegeta remembered that. He remembered the other leaning into him as his consciousness faded. He remembered him, laughing, gloating, but it wasn't his foster-father he remembered. He shouldn't have told the police it had been the same person who'd killed his parents years earlier, even if it was the truth.

'Why was it so stupid to think that there was something, someone, behind the crap that just keeps happening?' Vegeta growled to himself. In the end he didn't call the police, just the building super to report 'graffiti'.

Then he put it out of his mind. He had dinner to make, homework to do. He had a life to live. He'd be on guard, he was always on guard. For all the good it did.

"_Are we there yet, Daddy?"_

_His father turns to the back seat with an exasperated sigh. "Vegeta, we're five minutes closer to there than the last time you asked." He doesn't see the white light swelling up to blot out the world._

_The light burns away the car. In a split second his parents became blackened husks. They don't scream, they don't have time to scream._

_Everything around him burns and dies. But he doesn't die. He burns and he screams with the pain of it. But he doesn't die. There's something inside him, something impossibly powerful struggling to get out. It won't let him die._

_And for a moment he is someone else. He's older and he knows. He can't die now, she's waiting. She only came for him._

_Then he's out of the blast. Stars all around. Then it's gone and he's falling. The ground smashes into him with bone breaking force. He sees a blurry figure, tries to make his eyes focus, tries to call out for help._

_As darkness overwhelms him a high pitched, cruel laugh echoes through his head._

Vegeta sat bolt up-right in bed. His sheets were tangled around him and clammy, soaked with sweat. He rolled to his feet with only a shadow of his normal grace, his mind was still half-trapped in the nightmare, his oldest nightmare.

It wasn't enough to see the door still closed, he had to touch it, run his fingers over the lock, the security chain. Even if someone broke in they wouldn't reattach the security chain. The windows were still locked. Every sense he ad confirmed that he was alone in his apartment. The owner of that hideous laugh had just been a part of his nightmare. He wasn't here, wasn't watching, wasn't enjoying the results of his handiwork.

The police had never found the person responsible. Vegeta's description had been too vague, the ki-signature of the blast didn't match with anything they had on file. They assured him that people with that sort of power, who killed at random, didn't last long. They told him the person who killed his parents would have quickly come to the attention of the higher-level martial artists on the planet and would have been defeated. People who tried to imitate the Android's reign of terror never lasted long. It wasn't a particularly satisfying reassurance. Vegeta knew they were wrong, he knew that the attack hadn't been random. That laugh, someone hated him beyond reason or sanity.

Something had awoken in him that night which had allowed him to survive the attack. In that moment he'd known everything, but the things he'd known then were like fog, they burned away and vanished into nothing. But that moment had been enough to change him. A few months later when he meant his sensei and started to learn to harness the power he'd tapped into that night, he'd known. Even though he couldn't remember anything of the other person, the person he'd been that night, something of him lingered. The Demon-style he was being taught felt wrong, alien to his nature. He adapted everything he was taught until it synced with the muscle memories that had been seared into him that night.

Once Vegeta finished his ritual inspection of his apartment, once he'd convinced himself that there was no threat present, he stalked to the center of his barren livingroom. Slowly, carefully he went through every kata he knew. Sometimes when the memories were close to the surface new bits and pieces would come to him.

After the nightmares, when the memories of that night were close to the surface he always tried to recover what he'd known and lost in the seconds after the attack. The knowledge of who he'd been in that moment had been lost forever, he'd never recovered more than the dead certainty that it hadn't been a random attack and that there was someone waiting for him. The person he'd been in that moment was gone. But the other's physical memories remained. They were so much a part of the other that even a moment had been enough to burn those memories into him, in flesh and bone.

And for that Vegeta was thankful. He had the feeling he'd need every edge he could get when he finally managed to face down the being who was haunting him.

* * *

Briefs-sensei sighed as he noticed Itsuni-san's ki spiking yet again. Since class had started the boy had been so tense he seemed liable to snap at the slightest provocation.

"Hey Vegeta," Goku said coming up behind Itsuni and putting a friendly hand on his shoulder.

Briefs-sensei cringed in anticipation, he wasn't disappointed. Itsuni spun around, the maneuver sent his chair flying into the student next him and toppled the table into the row in front of his. Without the faintest hint of hesitation Itsuni lashed out at Goku, catching the taller boy off guard.

To himself Briefs-sensei admitted a degree of exasperation with Goku. How many times had he Trunks, Gohan, Pan or Goku's father tried to din it into the boy's head that he had to learn to stay on guard? Life wasn't a tournament, real enemies wouldn't wait for him to find the proper mind-set for a battle. And now there was Itsuni, who was giving the impression of having fallen off the scale on the other side of the spectrum this morning. Where Goku lacked any natural wariness, Itsuni had been acting down right paranoid.

Goku fell backwards and the chaos spread as he knocked the table in the row behind him into another row of students. Vegeta glared at him with a wary, suspicious look, even now it seemed as if he still hadn't realized Goku's intentions were harmless.

"I was going to ask if you were okay, but now I think you should be asking me that," Goku complained with a good-natured smile as he climbed back to his feet.

"You're a moron," Vegeta stated, finally relaxing.

"Sort of sounds like 'Goku, I'm sorry I punched you for absolutely no reason at all.' You're forgiven," Goku replied as he and Vegeta started righting chairs, tables and their fellow students.

Vegeta rolled his eyes.

Briefs-sensei waited until order had mostly been restored. "Itsuni, Koi, trade seats," he ordered.

"Me? Why?" Koi-san asked.

Briefs-sensei sighed. "Because I said so." He didn't say 'because it places Itsuni with his back to a wall and, hopefully, without people in his blind-spot he'll be less likely to jump out of his skin... or blow up half the classroom with a stray ki-blast.

Brief-sensei shook his head. He'd seen people with those mannerisms before, but most of them were in his father's generation, the ones who'd lived through the Android's reign of terror. Also the mannerisms hadn't been nearly so pronounced just a day ago, something had clearly happened since the boy had left school the night before.

* * *

After the change in the seating arrangement things settled down. Well as much as possible considering that Goku was in the class. He was only a little less hyper than he'd been the day before. He managed to earn himself another lunch-time detention in short order.

"He gets better once school's been in session for a week or so," Bunny said to Bulma during a break between classes.

The two girls watched with a combination of disbelief and bemusement as Goku endeavored to be subtle about grilling Vegeta on what had gone wrong. Goku and subtle had about as much in common as fire and ice.

Bunny shook her head as Vegeta used a small ki burst to disintegrate the most recent note Goku had passed to him.

"Our families tend to 'encourage' Goku to run wild during the breaks, it's what Son Goku did. They send him off to the desert or the tundra or the mountains, after a few weeks of survival training crap," Bunny shrugged, "well, not being able to talk to anyone takes a toll. When he gets back he needs to talk to absolutely everyone, constantly. Once he's made up for lost time he'll be less insane."

Bulma grimaced. "If he doesn't like it, why?"

"You know how people see my Grandpa Trunks and Uncle Gohan, well that's how our families see Son Goku," Bunny explained. "Everyone seriously believes that the Androids wouldn't have won if Goku hadn't of died. Goku jr. is apparently a _lot _like Son Goku, everyone wants him to be. They push him that way even when it's a bad fit."

* * *

When the lunch bell rang, Bunny turned to Bulma, "I told the other girls in the club to meet us in the courtyard," she said.

Bulma groaned. "Could you, maybe, put it off for a day or two?" She glanced toward Vegeta.

Bunny nodded. "You're right, someone needs to figure out what happened to him last night to make him so edgy today. You take care of Vegeta, I'll tell the other girls tomorrow, maybe."

"Thanks."

Bulma dug her lunch out of her bag and went to sit beside Vegeta. It had only been a day, but their classmates were already learning to keep their distance.

Vegeta watched Bulma approach. "Hn." He tensed when she sat right beside him, but didn't move away.

Bulma smiled. She started eating. Every now and then their arms brushed. They ate in silence. Gradually Vegeta relaxed.

"You okay?" Bulma asked.

Vegeta shrugged.

Tentatively Bulma leaned closer, bringing their shoulders into solid contact. They sat together until the lunch period ended.

* * *

Bunny raised an eyebrow when Goku joined her as she started home.

"Bulma decided to walk Vegeta to work," he said. "And she had lunch with him. Do you think he told her anything?"

"Yesterday you were the one saying not to pry," Bunny pointed out.

"Yesterday it was something in Vegeta's past that he didn't want to talk about. Today it's something that's hurting him and we're going to help," Goku stated.

"Leave it to Bulma. She doesn't tick him off every time she opens her mouth. Unlike someone I could name," Bunny replied.

Goku rolled his eyes. "Well, I guess I might, sort of, annoy him. He's way too serious. But yesterday we were both having fun sparring," he said. "Today he was too wary to have fun. He was acting like the spar could turn real at any moment."

"I noticed," Bunny said. "Still, your first instinct was good: Leave it alone."

"But-"

"Bulma's taking care of it," Bunny said. "If you haven't noticed, he likes her, she likes him. We'll keep an eye on them. I mean, I agree there's something wrong and he's our classmate. I'm worried too, so's Uncle Vegeta, but let Bulma do the talking."


	5. Settling In

**Second Chances**

**Chapter Five: Settling In**

**Disclaimer: **Characters and premise are the property of Akira Toriyama, I'm just borrowing them for a little non-profit fun.

**Author's Note: **Clarifying the family trees for the Sons and Briefs: My dislike of coming up with names has probably contributed somewhat to the problem, but the in-story logic is Trunks, Gohan and Bulma are the most famous people on the planet, their descendants keep their family names regardless of sex or marital status. Also while the families have not inter-married, they've been close family friends for generations, and have become honorary aunts and uncles to each-other's children. So both Goku jr and Bunny refer to Vegeta Briefs as Uncle, although for Goku the title is only honorary.

Also all of the Z-Fighters are sufficiently famous that people name their kids after them. I had this be the case because I don't like thinking up new names. And more importantly because I didn't want the reincarnated Bulma and Vegeta's names to change or for it to be too strange for the Sons and Briefs to meet a Bulma or Vegeta who is not related to them. To reinforce that naming kids after the Z-Fighters is a common practice in this time-line I've got some familiar names cropping up in new characters. Goku's father is named Kuririn, but he's not THE Kuririn, one of Goku and Bunny's fellow students in the Beyond Black Belts class is named Yajirobe, but he's not THE Yajirobe. Apologies for any confusion but these characters are extremely minor and mostly show up to make the point about names like Bulma and Vegeta being relatively common.

In this time-line Trunk and Gohan were both only children, their fathers died before their cannon younger siblings were conceive. After Cell was destroyed Bulma and Trunks journeyed to Namek and were able to use their Dragonballs to revive Gohan, but everyone else had been dead for too long to be saved (In cannon when the Dragonballs were used to revive 'everyone killed by Frieze and his men', the Dragon tells them he can only revive those killed in the previous year. For this story I added to that definition: Mass revivals only work if the people have been dead for under a year, for the revival of a single individual the wish has to be made within ten years of their death). Gohan met the Mirai-Videl, they got married and had Pan. Pan's daughter Vidalia is Goku Jr.'s mother.

Trunks married at some point, he has three children: Bra, Corsetta and Vegeta Briefs. The two girls are notably older than Vegeta. Corsetta is the oldest, she's the president of Capsule Corps, Bunny's mother and is divorced. Bra is the head of Research and Development at CC. Vegeta Briefs opted not to work for CC and teaches Science and Martial Arts at Orange Star High.

Bulma Okari and Vegeta Itsuni, while the reincarnations of Bulma and Vegeta, are not, in anyway related to the Briefs or Sons. I'm a believer in nurture over nature, so for Vegeta to retain elements of his cannon personality, he's had to go through hell and I didn't wish to decimate either the Sons or Briefs families, so he's not related. Having Bulma be Saiyan while Vegeta's not would be a little too weird, thus she isn't her own descendant either.

* * *

Tsukuri-san watched Itsuni go about his work, the boy's cheeks had an almost constant flush and his co-workers were smirking. Tsukuri-san shook his head and grinned at him. "Your little girlfriend saw you off again?" he asked and was rewarded with a deepening blush and an outraged squawk.

"She's not my girlfriend!" the line had an oft-repeated tone to it.

Tsukuri-san just laughed. Before Tsukuri-san had gotten to know Vegeta Itsuni he'd looked at S-Class fighters a beings just short of gods. He seen televised spars between the few dozen S-Classes scattered across the face of the globe. Fighters hovering in mid-air as they faced each other, casually throwing around enough power to annihilate the Earth. They'd seemed like something above and apart from normal humans. But then Itsuni had turned up looking for work. Tsukuri-san normally wouldn't have even considered hiring anyone that young and inexperienced, still he couldn't ignore all the raw power that the boy carried so easily. Itsuni lived up the reputation of the S-Class fighters; there was nothing a machine could do that he couldn't do better. And yet, Itsuni was still a kid, easily embarrassed by teasing about the opposite sex, over-eager to prove himself, generally just so damned young.

"The crane's down on the hotel site; we're waiting on parts," Tsukuri-san informed Itsuni. "Do you think you could..."

Vegeta nodded happily. Hauling those sorts of loads might not be too terribly interesting, but it would be a good work-out.

"You will let someone know if it's over-taxing you," Tsukuri-san reminded him sternly. "And kid? If you need time off for school-related activities, talk to me. We'll work something out."

Vegeta waved distractedly as he hurried off.

Tsukuri-san wondered if the teenager had even heard him. He sighed, 'As strong as Itsuni is, he's just a kid. And too damn self-reliant for his own good. He hasn't just forgotten how to ask for help, he doesn't even know how to accept it when it's offered.'

Vegeta heard footsteps behind him as he walked toward the school several mornings later and spun around. "Oh, it's just you," he said upon recognizing Bulma.

"Just me huh?" Bulma pouted theatrically. "And I brought lunch for you and everything. Maybe I won't give it to you now."

"You probably can't cook anyway," Vegeta replied.

"Say that again after you've eaten it," Bulma dared. She shook her head and grinned. "Now I have to feed you to prove you wrong." She fell into step beside him as they turned through the school gates.

Vegeta smirked.

"So, the start of the second month at the new school. I'm beginning to feel at home, how about you?" Bulma asked.

Vegeta shrugged noncommittally. They stopped by the lockers and switched to their building shoes.

"Nothing bad to say so you're saying nothing at all?" Bulma teased.

"Hey guys!" Bunny called from her seat as they came in the classroom.

"Hi!" Bulma called. She sat down beside Bunny while Vegeta crossed his arms and leaned back against the table in front of girls' row.

"The baseball team's first home game is Friday night," Bunny said. "The Girl's League is manning concessions, say you'll take a shift?"

"Second Inning?" Bulma offered.

"Thank you, you're a gem," Bunny replied. "Vegeta, you can get a night off can't you? Everyone will be there. You need to tell that boss of yours you need some time to be a kid."

"I like work," Vegeta stated.

"You just like blowing things up," Bulma laughed.

Vegeta shrugged. He couldn't deny that.

"But one night of hanging out with me wouldn't hurt you," Bulma continued coyly.

"I'll see," Vegeta offered.

"Good," Bulma stated. "I'm certain you'll manage, if you put your mind to it."

The first bell rang. The windows rattled as something sped past. "Goku," the trio remarked in unison and sure enough a short time later the gangly teen burst though the door. "I'm not late am I?" he asked, and most of his classmates groaned.

"Two and a third minutes to spare," Bulma reported.

"That's a relief," Goku declared. "I had a great spar with Dad this morning before school, and we missed breakfast. If Uncle Vegeta gave me detention over lunch I'd definitely starve before school got out."

"So what excuse will you use when I beat you during gym today?" Vegeta asked sardonically.

Goku grinned. "If I actually get lunch I won't be distracted thinking about how hungry I am. What excuse are_ you_ going to use when _you _lose today?"

"I do not make excuses," Vegeta declared archly. "Occasionally you simply get lucky."

Bulma and Bunny looked at each other and groaned. "Boys," they exclaimed in disgust.

"Goku, you and Vegeta should do a demo-spar at the pep rally," Bunny suggested. "That always gets everyone worked up and outside of the BBBer's no one at school's ever seen you really fight. You and Uncle always get out of sight when you've got detention.

Goku shrugged. "If we didn't go a mile up there'd be too much collateral damage. And it's not interesting anyways, I'm not supposed to like detention. So Uncle just throws ki-blasts at me and then scolds me for being sloppy. He won't let me close with him, it's no fun at all."

"Aw, poor Goku," Bunny said mockingly as Briefs-sensei walked into the classroom. Vegeta and Goku quickly moved to take their seats.

"Okari-san?" Brief-sensei called Bulma up to his desk. "Congratulations, you passed the written test for your Responder's permit."

Bulma clapped her hands together excitedly. A Responder's permit meant a person was qualified to help in an Incident, which could be anything from a car wreck to an intergalactic invasion. The people who held Responders' permits were the ones who were ready to step in if their world was threatened again. They were the reasons that their would never be another Android occupation, and Bulma was one step short of being one of those people.

"Will you be ready for the practical this afternoon in BBB?" Briefs-sensei asked.

"Are there any rules against using my inventions to help with the practical?" Bulma asked.

Briefs-sensei grinned wolfishly. "You may use anything you think would help. Just remember, I'll be administering the practical and it is my duty to uncover any weakness you might have. If you need aids to fight, I will do everything I can to take them from you. Because that is exactly what an enemy would do."

Bulma gulped. "I'll be ready," she said nervously.

* * *

"Lunch time!" Goku exclaimed cheerfully when the bell rang. "I'm gonna go get some stuff from the lunch cart, be right back!"

Bulma dug two boxes out of her bag. "For you," she said, handing one to Vegeta. "And you better like it."

"We'll see," Vegeta replied. "Thanks."

Bunny returned with her own lunch and dug-in.

Several minutes later Goku returned. He had a half-eaten slice of pizza in one hand and a stack of donuts balanced on the other.

"Hey," Goku said, his voice muffled by a mouthful of food.

Vegeta spun around, jumping up and lashing out in a single, smooth movement. His chair clattered loudly as it toppled over.

Goku threw up an arm to block. The donuts went flying.

"Saved from the sugar-crazed loon," Bunny remarked as she and Goku watched the donuts hit the floor. "Go get the _healthy _food your mom packed for you."

"You've been jumpy all day," Bulma said to Vegeta. "Something wrong?"

Vegeta righted his chair and sat back down. "Food's not half bad." he said.

"Why thank you, but your compliments could use little work and so could your diversion tactics," Bulma replied. "Seriously, what's wrong?"

"Come on, my donuts deserve an explanation for their sacrifice," Goku prompted.

"Sorry," Vegeta said gruffly. He couldn't deny that his nightmares left him on edge and Goku frequently took the brunt of his uneasiness.

Goku shrugged. "It's okay. You're good training for my reflexes," he said with a grin.

"It's not your reflexes that need work," Bunny remarked. "It's your day dreaming. You can't expect everyone to wait until you've gotten into the right mind-set before they attack you. That's why the Androids did so much damage, we weren't ready when they attacked and it took twenty years before we recovered from their first push."

Vegeta relaxed as the conversation was diverted away from him. He finished off the lunch Bulma had given him then considered the one he'd brought for himself and decided that he should save it for dinner. He hoped the nightmares would leave him alone for a few days, he didn't need or want people prying into his mental state, not even Bulma as much as he felt drawn to her.

* * *

Staring into her locker Bulma hesitated. At lunch Vegeta had distracted her from worrying about her practical with Briefs-sensei but now the moment was at hand.

This was it, this was when she found out if she was the sort of fighter who played around in tournaments or the sort who would be called on to defend her world. Bulma wasn't like Goku, Vegeta or Bunny. She hadn't been born with the raw strength to level a building with a punch. She'd never be an S-Class fighter. But she was going to prove that, with a little ingenuity, it didn't matter. She could still make a difference.

Well, to be fair, a little ingenuity and a lucky find. Bulma dug into her gym bag and pulled out a pair of bracers. The bracers were covered with a shimmering, opalescent netting. They glittered as Bulma pulled them on and flexed her hands to settle the attached gloves in place. Thin wiring led from the opalescent material wrapped around Bulma's forearms to disks situated on her palms.

"Show time," Bulma whispered to herself as she walked out of the changing room.

Briefs-sensei gestured for her to join him standing in front of the bleachers facing the class. "People, today Bulma Okari will be taking the practical exam for her Responder's Permit."

Bulma flushed as her classmates clapped enthusiastically.

"Now, Okari-san, you don't have to win the spar..." Briefs-sensei grinned wolfishly. "Just impress me."

"Yes Sensei!" Bulma exclaimed. They bowed to each other formally then Bulma leapt into the air.

"She's looking good so far," Yajirobe remarked.

"Just because she didn't faint at the thought of fighting Sensei?" one of the girls snarked. "Well, I guess that does put her one up on you."

"Gimme a break, I gave blood that day!" Yajirobe protested. "And I passed the third time."

Vegeta scowled darkly as he watched their teacher trade blows with Bulma. He started to stand. Bunny and Goku grabbed his arms and hauled him back into his seat.

"Don't you dare interfere!" Bunny hissed. "Chivary is nice, but this isn't the time!"

"Uncle won't really hurt her." Goku assured Vegeta. "But you don't want him to go easy on her. If she can't make the cut it's better to find out now and not against a real bad guy."

'Show him you can handle yourself without tricks,' Bulma thought. 'Then dazzle him with what you've got up your sleeve.'

Bulma blocked the strikes that were coming fast and furious. Although it irked her to do so, she gave ground to lessen the jarring impacts on her arms.

She twisted slightly and her Sensei's blow glazed off her forearm. A shove to his elbow as the blow went past her and he was over-extended. Bulma threw a quick kick to take advantage of the momentary opening. Most of her offensive repertoire consisted of kicks, avoiding the issue of a female's lesser upper body strength.

Briefs-sensei leapt upward, taking her kick on a heavily muscled thigh instead of the more vulnerable gut Bulma had been aiming for. He gave her an approving nod as he launched a new offensive.

Bulma fell back into the routine of block and give ground for a few moments. Then she flipped backward, kicking Briefs-sensei in the chest with both feet to get some distance between them.

As she landed the flip she collected her ki between her palms, "Kamehame-ha!" she shouted.

Briefs-sensei batted the attack aside and returned a blast of his own.

Bulma blocked with crossed forearms, and it broke around her like a wave over rocks.

On the ground Vegeta watched closely as they trade ki-blasts, his eyes narrowed. "The things on her arms, they're glowing," he stated.

Goku nodded. "They've been stealing the edge off Sensei's attacks, even just when he uses ki to enhancement his strength."

"Pretty smart," Bunny remarked. "Most people, when they build something that absorbs ki, they set it so it eats the whole blast, or tries to drain you dry. Something like that is easy to over-load. Bulma's device is just weakening his attacks a bit, making them easier to handle. She's giving herself more time to find a way to dump the build-up."

"She's been dumping it for a while," Goku said. "Into her own attacks. They've been getting steadily stronger. She's putting Uncle Vegeta's own ki into them."

"Clever girl." Bunny observed.

"But is it really fair?" Goku wondered.

"If it works it's fair," Bunny replied. "The whole point is figuring out what she could contribute in a real emergency, remember?"

"Relying on machines is reckless," Vegeta stated. "They fail when you need them most."

"Watch it mister," Bunny warned with a grin. "My mom is the president of Capsule Corp. Our machines don't fail." She patted him on the shoulder. "Don't worry, Briefs-sensei will thoroughly go over her gear before he okays it for combat. He'll probably even have my Aunt, his older sister Bra, look them over. She's the head of R&D at Capsule Corp."

"Hn."

Above Briefs-sensei relaxed his stance slightly. "You do know a common response to a weapon like yours is to feed it power until it blows up? Potentially taking your arms along with it."

Bulma smirked. "I designed it with a cut off. No matter how much power you throw at me, or how fast you throw it, they won't explode. And assuming I get any chance to retaliate, it will be a very big retaliation."

"I won't test that while they're on your arms," Briefs-sensei said. "However, even if they do work as promised, once they reach the cut off point you'll be on your own. You'll have to take full-strength attacks. Those aren't your only weakness either. We're not done yet."

Bulma prepared herself.

This time Briefs-sensei closed the distance between them and refused to allow Bulma the chance to back off. Instead throwing punches he moved to grapple with her. Bulma's natural agility kept her free for a few moments but the end was inevitable. Briefs-sensei got behind her, pinning her arms to her sides with one arm while his other arm locked around her neck.

"Yield." Bulma said.

"You did a respectable job." Briefs-sensei replied as he released her. "I'd like you to add some gymnastics, Akido and wrestling to address your vulnerablity with regard to grappling attacks, but all around a good show."

Bulma beamed.

"Bulma Okari-san, you have successfully passed the practical exam for your Responder's Permit and have earned the privilege and responsibility of guarding our planet. Congratulations." he continued formally. "Although I do need to take a closer look at your equipment before I can allow it in the field."

The class exploded into cheers.

"Welcome to the crew," Bunny said.

"Hey, you know what this means?" Goku asked cheerfully. "The next time there's an Incident, all four of us get to cut school!"

Bunny rolled her eyes and wapped him on the back of the head. While Vegeta simply scowled at everyone.

* * *

"How did you make the bracers?" Vegeta demanded as Bulma walked with him to his job after school let out.

"Well, actually, the idea came from something I found. If you came over to my house, I could show you." Bulma hesitated. She blushed faintly as she stole a sidelong look at Vegeta. "I'm not supposed to have boys over, but my parents won't be home yet. What they don't know can't get me in trouble."

Vegeta paused to look at her. "How much trouble are you planning on flirting with?"

Bulma flipped her hair over her shoulder. "Maybe I should ask you that. After all, I am flirting with you. Are you trouble?"

"Definitely."

Bulma laughed. "Seriously, today, not much. Just a smidge. Am I being too forward? Or a tease?"

Vegeta chuckled. "A little trouble sounds good to me." He grinned wickedly. "If I took the time for anything more, I'd be in trouble with my boss."

"Maybe we should fly," Bulma said. "It's faster than walking."

A few moments later Bulma superstitiously checked the garage for her parents cars then led Vegeta to her room.

"First I impress you with how brilliant I am," Bulma declared, trying to cover a sudden case of nerves.

Vegeta glanced at her bed, the only clear surface in the room, then he moved a stack of papers off her desk chair. "The secret of your bracers?"

Bulma nodded. She dropped to her stomach and fished a battered looking suitcase out from under her bed. "When I was a kid we used to live on a island near the old South City. I was playing around out in the country one day and I found this." Bulma pulled a severed arm out of her bag, a tangle of wires hung from it's ragged end. It looked like someone had ripped it from it's body.

Vegeta frowned, a feeling of familiarity nagging at the back of his mind.

Bulma chattered on about how much she'd worked out about the Androids just from that one piece and about how she'd adapted the evil technology to be used for good.

'It would have been an easy fight if I'd been able to Ascend.' Vegeta shook his head, where was this coming from? Ascend? He wasn't a Saiyan. Hell, even Goku and Bunny weren't Saiyan enough to become the Legendary, Bunny's grandfather, Trunks Briefs had been the last.

"I'm building a full suit of armor so I don't have to rely on arm blocks so much," Bulma continued. "Also I want to fix it so I can use the ki I steal to enhance my strength as well as my ki-blasts."

"Why don't you leave fighting to those of us who are better suited.?" Vegeta asked.

Bulma scowled and turned up her nose.

"Techs are respected. Your namesake, Bulma Briefs, she was a tech, a support person. But we all know without her Trunks would never have defeated the Androids, Gohan would have stayed dead and the world would have stayed the Androids' play-thing."

"Bulma's lover, your namesake, died protecting her," Bulma reminded Vegeta. "I'm not going to be left behind. _No one _is dying for me!"

"Putting yourself in the middle of battles, now that's a genius way of ensuring that," Vegeta muttered to himself. "Not that it surprises me."

He took the arm away from Bulma and put it back in the suitcase. "I thought you wanted a little trouble," he suggested.

"After you belittle my talents?"

"Not your talents, just your common sense." Vegeta took a step closer to Bulma, putting himself firmly in her personal space.

Bulma didn't back off an inch. She felt her heart speeding up in response to his proximity. "Just watch me prove you wrong," she challenged, leaning into him.

Vegeta cradled her chin in his hand. "How the hell do I know you so well?" he muttered.

Bulma shivered. "Me too," she whispered. "I know you too, from the first moment I saw you."


	6. Rescue Mission

**Second Chances**

**Chapter Six: Rescue Mission**

**Disclaimer: **Characters and premise are the property of Akira Toriyama, I'm just borrowing them for a little non-profit fun.

* * *

As they waited for classes to begin Vegeta's leg brushed against Bulma's beneath the table. The small, casual contact sent tingles all through Bulma's body.

"_How the hell do I know you so well?" he'd asked. Then he'd stared into her eyes for a long time, searching for the answer to his question._

"_You're her," he'd finally exhaled. "The one who came back for me."_

_And it resonated with her, she knew it was the truth even if she didn't understand. "You know why. Tell me?"_

Bulma felt a wave of heat creeping up her neck as she thought about his response. 'Okay, so if he wants to make-out instead of talking I'm not going to object any time soon,' she admitted to herself.

Vegeta smirked. Bulma knew instantly that he'd picked up on the direction her thoughts had taken. And that he was smugly pleased with the impact he'd had on her.

'There were a _few_ disadvantages to having a boyfriend who could read your body language perfectly from the moment you met,' Bulma thought.

To distract herself Bulma took her new Responder's Licence out of her wallet. She tilted it back and forth so the little Earth hologram in the corner caught the light.

"You're not worried about wearing it out?" Bunny asked teasingly.

"I just have to keep checking that it's really real," Bulma said. She ran her finger over her name and the 'Class-B' beside it that qualified her to help with everything up to and including alien invasion. Help, not act independently Briefs-sense had reminded her pointedly when he'd given it to her. Still this was proof that she _wasn't _someone who could best help by keeping out of the way.

"What's it like, responding to an Incident? Being in the thick of everything?" Bulma asked.

"It all depends on the sort of Incident," Bunny said, swiveling in her chair to face Bulma. "Natural disasters, plane crashes, stuff like that, it's all real straight forward. And there are too many natural disasters these days. My aunt says it's because of the Androids, they'd do insane stuff like blow up large chunks of the polar ice-caps or forcing the teutonic plates to move. And to be honest some of it started before the Androids, apparently inconveniencing were-beasts isn't the only repercussion of blowing up the moon from time to time. But like I said, dealing with them isn't complicated. You go, you do what you can to help and even if some of it is bad you know it would have been worse if not for you. Well, that's how it is for me anyway. Goku gets frustrated that he can't do more. Uncle Vegeta gets angry about all the stupid stuff people do that ends up making things worse."

Bulma listened attentively.

Bunny sighed. "But they both handle the fights better than I do. When it's someone who has developed abilities like ours who is maliciously abusing them, I just get so mad." She shrugged. "I know better, but I can't seem to make myself want to stop them above all else. I want to hurt them, punish them. Goku and Uncle, well, honestly, I think they like the fighting enough to forget to hate the person they're fighting against."

Bunny turned to Vegeta. "What's your experience with Incidents been?" she asked.

"Boring," Vegeta stated flatly.

"Oh come on, you've got to have more to say than that," Bunny urged.

Bulma looked hopeful.

"I got my permit when I was six. They stuck me on collateral prevention, keeping buildings from falling on morons who ought to know better than even to be there and the like. Boring," Vegeta elaborated.

"Six?! And I thought Goku and I started early," Bunny exclaimed. "With us it's the family business. What's your excuse?"

"Bell's going to ring," Vegeta said and headed for his seat.

"Now I'm dying to know," Bulma said.

A few moments after the bell rang Goku dashed in. "Sorry I'm late," he began earnestly. "See..." Goku trailed off as he noticed that Briefs-sensei wasn't in the room.

Goku tilted his head to the side, his expression became distant for a moment, then he smiled gleefully. "Sensei's late, his ki's not high so it's not a fight. This is so great. I'm going to remind him of this forever!"

Bunny rolled her eyes. "If he were running late he'd be agitated. It's probably an Incident."

"Then he'll be here shortly," Goku said. Bunny started re-packing her school bag. After a moment Vegeta and Bulma followed suit. Then the four of them settled in to wait for instructions.

"Well, there goes the baseball game," Bunny remarked.

"We might make it back in time," Goku said.

"So, you were about to tell us about getting your permit at age six?" Bulma prompted.

"Six? Really?" Goku said. His eyes widened. "They wouldn't let me. Said I didn't follow instruction well enough."

"They _still _say that," Bunny needled. "But since you're functionally indestructible they figured 'what's the harm?'"

Goku pulled down one eye-lid and stuck his tongue out at her. Then he pointedly turned back to Vegeta. "You got your permit when you were six. How'd you pull it off?"

"How old were you when you started training?" Bulma asked. "I know Demon-Style gets a person up to speed faster than Turtle-style, but still..."

"I've heard the reason almost no one starts out learning Demon-style is it's pretty much do-or-die," Bunny remarked.

"And after getting the basics of fighting you still would have had to study Responder Protocols, which isn't exactly light reading for a kindergartner." Bulma continued.

"You three plan to pester me until I tell you?" Vegeta grumped, not sounding quite as annoyed as he meant to.

They grinned and nodded. "If that's what it takes to get to know you," Bulma said.

"Fine," Vegeta sighed. "The first stage of the Demon-style is to break whatever mental barriers the initiate has on their ability to manifest ki. When I was four I survived a car wreck due to spontaneous manifestation of ki abilities. Stage One, complete. I think it might have taken all of fifteen seconds." He shrugged. "After that it was just a matter of gaining control and refining techniques. The technique part was a pain in the ass. My sensei's style didn't suit me, so I took the test and got my permit to show him I knew better than he did when it came to how I fought."

"And after all that, you still say Incidents are 'boring'?" Bunny shook her head.

"My sensei was also the Coordinating Responder for the area," Vegeta replied. "Just because I'd proven I was right didn't mean he wasn't a sore looser. He assigned me to every boring task he could think of. Until he went bat-shit. Killed half my primary school. That... wasn't boring." To himself, Vegeta added 'It looked like him at least.'

Bulma, Bunny and Goku stared at Vegeta in mute horror.

Vegeta glanced away and cursed softly. There was only so much truth that could be sipped under the radar by mentioning it as if it were trivial. "It was a long time ago. It doesn't matter now."

A few moments later Briefs-sensei opened the door. "Bunny, Goku, Itsuni-san, Okaeri-san, there's been an Incident." He turned to the rest of the class, "You know the drill, classes will resume as normal tomorrow."

The four of them followed him out into the hall where they were met by six of the other students from Briefs-sensei's Martial Arts class. "We've received a tsunami warning off the coast," Briefs-sensei informed them as they walked. "We've got less than an hour to help evacuate the coastal regions before it hits. There's a helicopter waiting outside. Bunny, you'll be acting as the team-leader and coordinating our evacuation efforts with the other Responders. Goku, Itsuni, you're with me. We're going to try to break the force of the wave before it hits ground."

Bulma, Bunny and their classmates boarded the helicopter while Briefs-sensei, Goku and Vegeta took to the air.

* * *

As she boarded Bunny turned to the pilot. "Do you have our information packet?"

He handed her a hand-held projector, and a set of coms. "Briefing for your team," he said.

"Thanks," Bunny replied and joined her classmates in the body of the helicopter. "Okay everyone, I've got our orders," she said, handing out the ear-pieces.

She pointed the projector at a blank section of hull and turned it on. A map of the coast appeared on the wall.

Bunny slid her ear-piece into place. "This is the OSHS Responder team, ready for orders."

"Can everyone hear me?" their contact asked. The rest of the team affirmed that they were receiving. "Alright, this is a fast evacuation. You will have forty minutes to clear the evacuation zone once you hit the ground. We do not have time or space to let people collect belongings. Anyone still in the evac zone, you get them and you go."

"You should be looking at a map of the area."

"We are," Bunny confirmed.

"The red zones on the map indicate the areas you are responsible for evacuating. Blue indicates refuge sites; high ground or reinforced buildings. The sites are marked with search lights for easy recognition from the ground or air.

"Once again, you will have forty minutes from the time you hit the ground. When the final warning sirens sound you need to head for the nearest refuge sight. This _does_ apply to fliers. Waves can exceed a hundred feet and they can toss cars around more easily than you can. You _do not_ want to get hit by one."

"Speed counts but don't get careless out there. And I'll see you all at the debriefing. Over and out."

"Okay," Bunny said taking over the briefing. "Yajirobi, Hon start at the north edge of our territory and work inward. Paperi, Bell you've got the west. Marka, Aoi take the south. I'll get the east. Bulma, I want you to stay at the helicopter pad and manage the loading. Any questions?"

After a moment's silence Bunny sat down beside Bulma.

Bulma's foot tapped out a nervous rhythm. She smoothed her hand over her leg, willing herself to calmness. "My first Incident. Kami, I hope I don't screw up" she confided to Bunny.

"You'll do fine," Bunny said with a smile. "You're certified, you know what to do. Just keep your training in mind and remember to listen to your team-leader, aka me. We go in, get everyone out of harms way and get out, easy as pie."

* * *

Briefs-sensei turned to two boys who'd been following him. "We can't stop the tsunami," he stated. "If it were solid we could but a liquid will simply flow around our attacks and continue on. Our attacks don't have the breathe to stop something like this. But we're going to do our best to reduce it's power and momentum," he said.

"What do we do?" Vegeta asked.

"To have any effect our blasts are going to have to go deep. We'll have to split the water to the sea-floor," Briefs-sensei continued. "And on either side of our blasts the wave will continue on-ward. However, some of it's momentum will be lost to fill-in the voids we create, but that's all we can do.

Goku nodded.

"Spread out, put about a fifty meters between us," Briefs-sensei said. "We'll meet up with the wave front in another minute."

* * *

"I'm sorry, you can't bring anything," Bulma said for what felt like the hundredth time. "Everything you brings means fewer people on the helicopter ferrying you to safety."

"Miss? Miss! I can't find my little sister!" a girl shouted.

Bulma waded into the crowd.

"She was supposed to be on her way home from school," the girl continued when Bulma reached her. "I called the school, but they said the kids had already left when they got the alert. I was looking for her but they said I had to leave."

"What's her name?" Bulma asked.

"It's Shay, Shay Nanda," the girl said quickly.

"And yours?"

"Melissa."

Bulma pulled up a map of the area on her palm-top. "Show me the school, your house and her normal route home."

Melissa highlighted the information on Bulma's map with a touch. "She's only in the forth grade, our parents don't get home till late. I'm supposed to watch her after school but she didn't come home."

"We'll find her," Bulma said. "You're being taken to the Mount Rez Camp Ground. We'll get your sister there as soon as we can."

Bulma took to the air in order to clear the crowd. She tapped her ear-piece. "Bunny, missing kid," she reported. "Shay Nanda, forth grade."

"I'm forwarding the info," Bunny replied. "We'll see if she's checked in with another group."

Bulma fidgeted impatiently while she waited for Bunny to get back to her. "No luggage!" she snapped. She wanted to be off, looking for the little girl, but her training said wait. She knew she shouldn't leave her post until it was confirmed that the child was missing.

Bulma's ear-piece buzzed. "No word on the kid," Bunny reported. "Go looking."

"I'm on it." Bulma replied. She waved to the man taking names as the evacuees boarded the helicopter. "You're on your own for a bit," she called. "Gotta find a kid."

He nodded and Bulma took to the air. First she flew to the sister's house. "Hello? Anyone home?" she shouted as she opened the door. "Shay? Melissa's worried about you."

There was no response and Bulma didn't sense anyone in the house. She started back-tracking the girl's route home, honing her ki-sense for any signs of life and wishing she was more secure in her mastery of her sixth sense.

* * *

Vegeta observed Briefs-sensei's first few blasts. If they were going to be doing this repeatedly he wanted to know the minium blast size needed.

Briefs-sensei set himself solidly, floating a half-dozen meters above the ocean surface.

"Where are the big waves?" Goku asked. "Shouldn't we be seeing them?"

Vegeta gave him a superior look. "They don't get big until they reach the shallows, idiot," he stated.

"Too bad, I wanted to see them," Goku replied.

Briefs-sensei brought his hands together. "Gallic Gun!" he shouted.

Vegeta's head jerked up. 'That is my attack!' One of the things he'd recovered from the Other. Maybe a third as powerful as the blast he'd used to vaporize the high-rise apartment building for Tsukuri-san. The sea split before the force of the attack. In it's wake, Vegeta caught a momentary glimpse of sand then the ocean rushed in to fill the void.

'I won't use that attack,' Vegeta decided. 'It'll raise too many questions.'

He considered his reserves, if he was going to have any sort of staying power he'd need to wait at least two or three minutes between blasts.

Vegeta and Goku spaced themselves out on either side of Briefs-sensei and faced the incoming waves.

* * *

"Shay? Shay?" Bulma shouted as she jogged down the deserted street.

She felt something faintly tugging at the back of her mind. Bulma stopped, she stood in the middle of the street, eyes closed, head tilted to one side, reaching for the tiny spark she'd felt.

After a moment she found it and took off running.

"Shay!" she shouted as she hopped a fence and ran across a baseball diamond to the wooded area of the city park.

"I'm up here!" a small voice called.

Bulma looked up into the branches of the tree.

"I heard the loud speaker," Shay said. "I didn't want the wave to get me."

Bulma flew up to the tree branch were Shay was clinging and smiled reassuringly. "Sweetie, we have a much better place for you than this old tree. Way taller. And your sister, Melissa is already there waiting for you."

Shay held out her hands. Bulma scooped her up and flew back toward the evacuation site. She tapped her earpiece. "Bunny! I found her!" Bulma exclaimed.

"Good job," Bunny replied. "Get her to the helicopter then come help me. I've got a stalled bus on one of the escape routes. The passengers are dealt with but I'm going to need a little help to move the damn bus. I can lift the weight, but the size makes it too awkward, you think you can help me balance it?"

* * *

For almost fifteen minutes Briefs-sensei, Goku and Vegeta had been firing into the ocean as they gradually fell back toward the shore.

The constant barrage of strong ki-blasts was beginning to tell on their reserves. Vegeta could feel the tell-tale acid-wash of over-extension burning through his arms in the wake of each new blast. He saw flickers at the edge of his vision and heard a strange buzzing echoing in his ears as exhaustion began to play tricks on his senses.

Like Vegeta, Goku continued their efforts with a dogged determination. His thoughts tunneled inward. 'Another blast. Drop back. Another blast.'

The monotonous repetition of their task, along with the energy expenditure, sent Vegeta into a trance state.

"_You live and die at my whims."_

Vegeta's head snapped around, trying to see who had spoken.

"Itsuni, everything okay?" Briefs-sensei called.

Vegeta ignored him. The phantom who'd haunted his life for so long was here. Somewhere.

"_You thought you could escape me? No matter how many times you're reborn I will find you."_

Vegeta spun around and fired a powerful ki-blast. "Fight me, you coward!" he challenged.

Briefs-sensei dragged Goku out of the path of the blast. "Get your head in the game kid," he ordered quietly.

Goku stared at Vegeta, his eyes wide.

"No one owns me!" Vegeta shouted. He turned and fired at something only he could see.

"What's wrong with him?" Goku asked worriedly.

Briefs-sensei shook his head. Vegeta's ki was rocketing upwards. "I don't know." In his opinion Itsuni appeared to be having a flashback or a hallucinating, a flashback fit with some of the other mannerism Itsuni had displayed. Regardless he'd rather not speculate to one of Itsuni's classmates, even if it was Goku.

Vegeta's power level began to plateau. Briefs-sensei was about to suggest that they should knock the teen unconscious, but there was something about Vegeta's ki that tugged at his memory. His mouth dropped open as he realized why it seemed familiar.

"He hasn't reached his limit," Goku said, he sounded impressed. "This is just water building behind a dam."

Briefs-sensei nodded, still stunned speechless. They'd always speculated that human evolution, hastened by the winnowing the Androids had inflicted on the population, would eventually produce an analogue of the Super Saiyan Transformation among the New Types.

Vegeta screamed. The dam broke. The force of the boy's aura knocked Goku and Briefs-sensei back several paces.

Vegeta's black hair turned an unearthly shade of red while his dark eyes turned to silver.

"Oh wow!" Goku exclaimed. "Vegeta just- That is so awesome!"

But the transformation lasted only a few short seconds. Then Vegeta was plunging toward the waves below. Out cold.


	7. New Type

**Second Chances**

**Chapter Seven: New Type**

**Author's Notes: **Sorry about the long delay. During the last few months I've started a great new job with an interesting commuting situation. I'm having to work out when writing and typing will fit into my new schedule. **  
**

**Disclaimer: **Characters and premise are the property of Akira Toriyama, I'm just borrowing them for a little non-profit fun.

* * *

Bulma glanced around the busy Crisis Center. They'd finished the evacuation but it would be hours before the waves receded.

An older woman bustled about keeping everyone else organized. "Grandma Pan! My team's accounted for," Bunny called.

"Well, send them on back! Get some food in them," the older woman exclaimed. "Since you're checking in, I take it your uncle and my grandson decided to do something a bit more dramatic than search and rescue?"

"Yeah, you know them," Bunny replied. "They took Vegeta Itsuni, the new GUY in our Responders' Unit with them."

Pan gave Bunny a sympathetic look and patted her on the arm.

"Granny, meet Bulma Okaeri," Bunny announced. "This was her first Incident."

"You tracked down a missing kid," Pan remarked to Bulma. "Good job."

"Thank you ma'am," Bulma replied, blushing brightly. Son Pan was Gohan's daughter, Bulma had never dreamed someone so famous would actually talk to her.

The doors swung open. Briefs-sensei and Goku rushed in supporting Vegeta between them.

"What happened?" Bulma exclaimed as she rushed over, everything else forgotten.

Vegeta's skin was mottled with bruises, darkening to an ugly mauve from his elbows down to his fingertips.

"Over here," Pan ordered, directing them to a pallet along the wall. She frowned as she concentrated her ki-sense on Vegeta, ascertaining the damage. "What happened? He didn't get caught by a wave. The sort of bruising, I've never seen the like."

"Grandma, he ascended!" Goku exclaimed excitedly. "Like Great Grandpa or Trunks-san!"

Briefs-sensei nodded. "Itsuni-san ascended, became super-human. For about four seconds, then he passed out." He lowered his voice discreetly as he pulled Pan aside. "Immediately before, I think he was having a flashback." He nodded toward Vegeta's severely bruised hands and arms. "He fired off several high-level blasts, very high level. Then he ascended and lost consciousness. We caught him before he hit the water but he was covered in bruises."

Pan grimaced. "His own powers did that to him? I don't believe it."

"I don't know how else to explain it. We've speculated that the New Types would be able to ascend like Saiyans could, but he's the first to actually do it." Briefs-sensei said. "We don't know anything about Human ascension."

"He seems stable," Pan announced. "In fact, from his ki, I think he's waking up. But you should take him to Bra. Have her look him over. She's spent more time studying ki than any of us."

"Big sister? Not Dende?" Briefs-sensei asked.

Pan shrugged "He's a bit banged up, but nothing that won't heal. I'm more worried about what went wrong in the first place than about the damage from this incident. Still, I have to ask: What were you thinking, Vegeta? You barely know this kid, know next to nothing about his powers, and you tell me he's potentially unstable. You put him and yourselves in unnecessary danger. If you and Goku needed back-up you should have taken Bunny."

"Itsuni's been great in class. He's been a Responder for years, he's more experienced than either Goku or Bunny. Itsuni has power to spare, more than I ever imagined," Briefs-sensei replied tersely. "Goku needs a partner, but not Bunny."

"Why ever not?" Pan exclaimed. "They were a great team."

"_Were_," Briefs-sensei said. "About three years ago. But Goku's distractable at the best of times. When Bunny's there, his first thought is always her. Besides, Bunny has a talent for leadership that would be wasted by having her watch Goku's back."

"They hit puberty, he had a crush," Pan interpreted. "The boy would have gotten over it."

"He did," Briefs-sensei said. "Lately they quarrel and snipe at each other constantly. And he's still thinking about her more than about his surroundings when they work together."

Pan pursed her lips. "Now isn't the time," she declared. "But telling them to avoid each other won't solve a thing."

Bulma wanted to hold Vegeta's hand but as bruised as he was she was afraid touching him would only cause him more pain.

Goku and Bunny hovered worriedly nearby.

Vegeta groaned. He blinked several times then his eyes focused. He held up one hand and stared at the bruises covering it for several moments. "What the hell happened?" he demanded, his voice emerged as a harsh whisper, as if his vocal cords were as battered as the rest of him.

"Well, first you sort of went nuts," Goku began with a frank tactlessness. "Then you ascended. Which I always thought you had to be Saiyan to do. Grandpa Gohan and Trunks-san are the only ones I've ever seen do it and that was only when I was real little, before they got old. What you did was like that, only different. You looked different, your eyes turned silver and your hair was burning red, Saiyans turn blond with greenish-blue eyes. Then you passed out." Goku gestured to Vegeta's bruises. "And those formed. It was pretty weird."

Goku paused for a moment then added, "Oh and the tsunami only got about three-fourths as high as expected. So we did some good out there, even if it was incredibly boring... at least until you went crazy and starting blasting every which way. Who were you shouting at anyway? I didn't sense anyone else out there with us."

Vegeta sat up. Bulma chewed on her lip nervously, he was moving like an old man, slow and gingerly. She could see how much he hurt. She wanted to yell at him, tell him to lie still and not to pretend to be less hurt than he was. She know he wouldn't appreciate it though, especially not in front of Goku. Instead she held perfectly still as he used her shoulder to gain the leverage he needed to make it to his feet.

"I'm going home," Vegeta stated.

"Oh no you're not," Briefs-sensei declared. He put a hand under Vegeta's elbow, providing support while steering him toward the back door. "We need to know why you got hurt. I've already called my sister, she'll meet us at her lab. Itsuni-kun, you_ do_ want to know what happened out there. Trust me, we'll get everything sorted out."

Vegeta hesitated. "All right, but only because I lost consciousness. It's a liability if it's going to happen again and I won't tolerate that."

"I understand," Briefs-sensei said.

Bulma followed after them. When they reached the roof Briefs-sensei decapsulized a personal jet-copter. He raised an eyebrow when Bulma scrambled into the backseat but Vegeta didn't say anything so neither did he.

When Bulma saw the famous dome of the original Capsule Corp Building, the place Trunks Briefs still called home, growing larger in the front window of the jet-copter and she realized that Briefs-sensei was taking them there, Bulma was awe-struck. Walking through the halls of the single most famous building on the planet Bulma wondered at the shear audacity of her basically inviting herself here.

Of course she'd known it was the only way she'd figure out how seriously Vegeta had been hurt. She also knew he was more comfortable with her there, even if he never would have allowed himself a weakness such as asking her to come with him. And if she'd known they were coming here... Bulma shook her head, it was just as well she hadn't known what she was getting herself into.

All of Bulma's nervousness and uncertainty vanished when Briefs-sensei ushered them into the lab. The purposeful hum of equipment, the faint tang of o-zone in the air, the gleam of polished lab-benches spoke to Bulma's soul. This was a place where problems were solved. Whatever mysterious thing had happened to Vegeta, here they would figure it out and fix it.

"Big Sis?" Brief-sensei called.

"Gimme a sec! I'm almost done calibrating it for a human," the lab's owner called distractedly. She was a slim woman of less than average height although her spiky, lavender tresses added a few inches to the total.

After a moment she turned around and casually pushed her safety goggles to the top of her head. She glanced from Vegeta to Bulma, noted Vegeta's bruises then nodded to herself. "So you're the New Type fighter Baby Brother's been going on about," she said. "I'm Bra Briefs, pleased to meet ya, now get your shirt off and get over here so I can figure out how you managed to fry yourself."

Vegeta stared at her.

"Well? What's taking you so long?" Bra demanded. "Electrodes don't attach themselves and they're useless without skin contact. It'd be better if I could hook directly into your nervous system but everyone screams bloody murder when I jump straight to invasive procedures."

"Bra, they've never met you before," Briefs-sensei sighed. "Could you try to reign in the mad-scientist routine just a bit?"

"The boy burst every capillary from the elbow down, and probably a few larger blood vessels as well. Not to mention the lighter bruising across the rest of his body," Bra said. "And he did it to himself. What's he got to fear from me?" She turned back to Vegeta. "Well boy, what are you scared of? Least I know what my tests will do to you. This one just measures your ki, won't hurt a bit."

"I fear nothing," Vegeta snapped. He stripped off his shirt and stepped closer to Bra's machine.

Bulma bit the inside of her cheek to keep herself from gasping at the scars; some old, a few vividly new; which marked him.

Briefs-sensei and his sister exchanged a grim look.

"Stand here," Bra instructed. She gestured to a slightly raised disk in the floor. She attached a few electrodes over Vegeta's major nerve clusters.

"First I need to get a baseline established," Bra stated. As she continued speaking her voice took on a hypnotic, sing-song rhythm "Relax. Don't repress your ki, but don't use it either. For the moment let yourself simply exist."

"Okay, that's good. Now stay like that for just a few minutes... Good, good."

"Now, ready yourself for battle. Let your ki reinforce your skin, your muscles, your bones. Make yourself invulnerable, like the mountains, tempered, like steel."

"All right. Now I'm going to form a number of different sized ki blasts then dissipate them. I want you to imitate me. Form the blasts as quickly as you can. Then allow them to dissipate. DO NOT release a ki blast in my lab. Or I will skin you, literally tan your hide and use it for a door mat."

Bulma's mouth gaped open.

"She preformed these same tests on Bunny and Goku when they were little," Briefs-sensei whispered. "There were... misunderstandings. It wasn't the first time my grandmother's lab had to be rebuilt, probably won't be the last time either."

"Oh," Bulma managed.

Bra released Vegeta then spent several minutes pouring over the data. She frowned, turned and stared at Vegeta so pointedly that the teen began to fidget. "What?" he demanded.

To everyone's surprise Bra grabbed Briefs-sensei and hauled him out into the hall, leaving the two teens alone in the lab with their confusion.

As soon as the door slid shut Bra gave her brother a not-so-gentle shove toward the living area of the complex. "Get Dad, we need to have a chat with a certain little green godling," she ordered.

"Sis, what did you find out?" Briefs-sensei asked.

"That someone's been keeping secrets," Bra said. "Go get Dad, I don't feel like repeating myself over and over again."

"Okay, I'll play it your way," Briefs-sensei sighed. "But you get Dad. I can't just run off and leave my students without a word of explanation."

Bra tilted her head back as if searching he skies. "The brats are on their way, let them play host."

"I'll just be a minute." Briefs-sensei leaned back into the lab as Bra jogged off. "Itsuni-san, Okaeri-san?" he said. "We need to check into something. Bunny and Goku should be here shortly. Until they get here make yourselves at home. The kitchen's a hundred yards that way." He hesitated for a moment. "Vegeta, try to minimize your ki usage until we've figured this out."

Vegeta grimaced, annoyed both by the necessity of the restriction and the obviousness of the warning.

"We'll be back as soon as possible." Briefs-sensei promised as he herded his two students in the direction of the kitchen then took off for the Lookout.

Brief-sense caught up to his father and sister shortly before their jet-copter landed in the Lookout's broad courtyard.

'This had better be necessary, sis,' Briefs-sensei thought to himself as he noticed the dark look on his father's face. Trunks did not care for reminders of his advancing age. His inability to fly anymore was a particular sore spot. Briefs-sensei landed quietly behind the jet-copter and walked over to join them.

"What brings you all the way up here?" Dende asked as he hurried out of his temple to greet them.

When Gohan and Dende had first met they'd appeared to be of the same age, but where Gohan had died of old age two years earlier Dende was only just coming into his prime. 'A hundred and seventy-five years old and he'd still get carded if he tried going to a bar,' Trunks thought. 'Well, assuming the bouncer could look past the antenna and green skin to notice anything else.'

"You'll have to ask my daughter what this is all about," Trunks said to Dende. "She hasn't seen fit to explain why she dragged me up here just yet."

"Because someone," Bra glared pointedly at Dende, "is keeping secrets."

"I observe the entire world, I don't tell you everything," Dende stated. "Because most of it is none of your business."

"Well, this is." Bra said accusingly. "There's a kid down in my lab who spontaneously recreated Prince Vegeta's martial arts style, according to what my brother says. And my readings show that this kid routinely damages himself because he thinks he ought to be able to channel more ki than his body is ready to handle."

"There's a large mental/emotional component to any ki usage," Bra continued, her tone becoming a lecturer's. "Anyone can pull more ki than their body can tolerate under the right circumstances. But the way that kid powers up, he isn't getting warnings before he hurts himself. Extrapolating from the data I gathered, he thinks his limits are around where an adult Saiyan's would be, judging from the data Grandma Bulma collected back when she was trying to cure Son Goku's heart disease."

"Furthermore, this kid figured out the mental aspect of ascension, again, well before he was physically ready for it. That's why he knocked himself out, his body finally said enough with the abuse."

"That kid is Prince Vegeta of Vegeta-sai, reincarnated." Bra declared. "You should have told us!"

Trunks staggered. Briefs-sensei put a hand under his father's elbow to steady him, but his own expression was equally stunned.

"It wasn't any of your business," Dende confirmed coolly.

"He's my father," Trunks said.

"No," Dende shook his head. "He's the reincarnation of Prince Vegeta, he's not your father. He's not a murderer either, let alone a galactically infamous destroyer of planetary populations. That's the point of reincarnation. It's the ultimate clean slate, a new life. He is not Prince Vegeta, he's what Vegeta might have been under different circumstances. If he'd never met Frieza, for example. His past life is not supposed to intrude on this one. Not even if you mean well," Dende gave Trunks a small sympathetic smile as the old demi-Saiyan opened his mouth to protest. "At the very least you would have tried to keep him from repeating his past self's mistakes. How would you have explained it when he realized that you have a rather over-specific concern about him growing up to terrorize the galaxy?"

Trunks winced.

"I understand what you're saying," Briefs-sensei said. "But obviously something went wrong. He fights with Prince Vegeta's style, he apparently remembers having Prince Vegeta's power levels. Somehow his previous life is intruding on this one." Briefs-sensei grimaced. "Besides, that kid's life has been hellish. The teachers at Orange Star Hich were warned about his foster-father nearly killing him before he started school there, but that incident doesn't account for half his scars. In class I put him in the last row because the only way he relaxes even a little is when he's got a wall at his back. Most of people with his mannerism survived first-hand encounters with the Androids."

"So deal with it, like you would deal with it if you suspected someone was hurting any of your students," Dende snapped, angry at the guilt he felt that Vegeta's new life hadn't turned out better. "Reincarnation doesn't come with guarantees. And forget he has anything to do with Prince Vegeta. For his sake. All you'll do is drag his past sins into this life."

"What about the ki issue?" Bra asked. "This time the kid burst capillaries all over his body, he broke so many blood vessels in his hands the discoloration looked like gloves. He increased the intercranial pressure in his brain. This time he fainted, next time he could give himself a stroke."

"He has the same potential Prince Vegeta did," Dende said. "Train him, eventually his body will catch up to his expectations. Then it won't be a problem."

"How can you know that?" Trunks asked.

Dende smiled. "That's just how it works. Reincarnation doesn't remove a person's innate potential. Those you've been calling New Types? They're all reborn Saiyans."

"That explains Goku jr." Bra remarked. "His father's New Type."

"But why?" Briefs-sensei asked.

"Because unredeemably evil souls are incredibly rare." Dende explained. "Dark Souls, souls which are intrinsically evil, are one in a hundred billion. There's no reason to keep the Saiyans in Hell forever. Actually, most souls are reincarnated at least a few times, and not just because of villainy. It could be unfinished business, unrealized dreams, a child who didn't get the chance to live or just dissatisfaction with the life they lead, something holds them back. Normally these souls are born back into the species they came from, maybe with a detour or two into a lower life-form to teach them a lesson, but eventually if you were human you'll end up human again. But we can hardly do that with the Saiyans, they have no living people to be born back into. Beyond that they caused so much trouble before Frieza wiped them out. For years King Enma didn't know what to do with them.

"Then he figured, it worked with Son Goku, right?" Bra asked. "Goku came to Earth, that bump to the head wiped out everything he'd been before that point, basically coming as close to reincarnation as is possible without actually dying. And instead of growing up to become a destroyer he became a protector."

Dende nodded. "The conditioning the Saiyans put their children through practically reversed King Enma' soul-washing technique. Many of the gods considered them to be an evil race, but Goku's case showed it was just the conditioning, minus that Saiyans have the same potential for good or evil as anyone else. And sending them to Earth for their second chance reassures Goku. He's always held himself responsible for the Androids being built in the first place. He remains the Kais' greatest champion. We'd rather the Earth be strongly protected than have Goku worrying too much about making enemies."

Trunks shook his head. "Wow, I... Just wow. So essentially Humans and Saiyans have become a single race. Wow. And Vegeta, I could go talk to Vegeta."

"Are Nappa or Raditz back?" Bra asked curiously. "Anyone else we've heard of?"

"I won't tell you that!" Dende exclaimed in frustration. He turned to Trunks, "and you CAN'T just go talk to that child like he's Prince Vegeta, he is not your father! Don't you listen? Bringing in elements of a person's past life is dangerous! It almost always does more harm than good, it's not a game for amateurs!"


	8. Reactions

**Second Chances**

**Chapter Eight: Reactions**

**Disclaimer: **Characters and premise are the property of Akira Toriyama, I'm just borrowing them for a little non-profit fun.

* * *

Vegeta stood and stretched, testing his balance and center of gravity. He glanced at Briefs-sensei. "I've never heard of weighted clothes this heavy," he said. "They're not bulky either."

"My grandmother's invention," Briefs-sensei replied. "She got tired of looking at her son with huge weights on his wrists and ankles. There are miniaturized gravity generators worked into the fabric. Turn up the dial and it gets heavier. You'll want to increase the settings about 5 G's a week until you're comfortable at 150 G's."

Vegeta nodded. "You said something about changing my calisthenics routine?"

"Yes. Up until now I was having you work on smoothing out your style. Helping you finish adapting it," Brief-sensei said. 'Which wasn't difficult,' he thought, he knew exactly what Itsuni was working toward after all.

"For now, you'll need to change your focus. We've got to bring up your ki capacity as quickly as possible," Briefs-sensei continued. "It's stamina training, basically."

"You want me to _increase _my stamina?" Vegeta demanded. "Do you have any idea how long that sort of routine would take me?" He lifted an arm, nodding to the weights, "Even with these?"

Briefs-sensei sighed. "You need to do this. If you don't correct the inequality between your physical and mental ki-capacity, you will do serious harm to yourself."

"Fine, I'll find the time," Vegeta snapped.

* * *

Corsetta Briefs smiled as she glanced at her daughter out of the corner of her eye. "So, do you think you're up for this?"

Bunny shook her head, her tone one of mock sadness. "Mother, who do you think you're fooling?" she asked. "You are a desk-jockey. Maybe I ought to double my handicap? Just to make sure I break a sweat?"

Corsetta laughed. "We'll just have to see about that. I'm in the mood for outside. Do you have your weights?"

"Always," Bunny replied.

"What is your current setting?" Corsetta asked curiously.

"95 G's" Bunny said.

"That's your daily setting? Not for calisthenics?" Corsetta asked with a small frown.

Bunny nodded. "I just turned it up."

"It's not because of that new boy in your class?" Corsetta asked. "You're not trying to out-do him?"

"Vegeta-kun?" Bunny shook her head vehemently. "I might have missed the excitement but I saw the aftermath. I want to get stronger but I'm not going to tear myself apart to do it."

Bunny leapt into the air with her mother close behind her. "Still, it would be kind of , well, neat to ascend. I'd be the first girl ever to manage it." Under her breath she added. "Goku and Uncle Vegeta would probably die of shock."

As they flew Corsetta spotted the skeletal fingers of a ruined city breaking the horizon. "How do you feel about Hide and Seek?" she suggested.

Bunny shrugged. "Sure, whatever, but I can't use the weights if I'm hiding," she pointed out as she switched the gravity-generators off. "Ready?" she asked.

"Set?" Corsetta replied.

"GO!" They streaked toward the stratosphere. The air grew thin and the sky turned black. When the first stars became visible they pulled in their ki and let themselves fall. They spread their arms and the wind whipped by as they directed their fall toward the ruined city far below. As it drew closer and closer they separated, looking for a spot to hide. At the last moment they brought up their ki for just a second to break then they vanished into the maze of shattered concrete.

Bunny angled her fall toward a low building, or at least it was three-quarters of a building. The last corner was rubble. She used the barest touch of ki to slow her fall. Her feet struck the floor of the building. The tile, long left exposed to the elements crumbled under the force. Bunny tucked and rolled, redirecting her momentum before it took her straight through the floor. She kept her ki neatly hidden away. She tumbled across the breathe of the old office building, taking out a half-dozen moldy cubical dividers before her momentum was spent. Bunny uncurled, she came to her feet in a wary crouch. Even she rose she extended her senses, searching for the slightest trace of her mother.

The city's emptiness and stillness echoed back at her. Bunny shivered, there was something haunting about the old cities, left standing deserted since the days of the Androids. In a place like this her grandfather's stories took on physical presence. For a moment when Bunny glanced down at the street, through the building's shattered wall she could almost see the dark haired

Android standing there, coldly disdainful of the life around him. She could imagine him catching sight of a movement out of the corner of his eye, could picture him stretching his hand out casually, not even bothering to turn as he released the blast that had shattered the building a life-time ago.

Bunny shuttered. That was why they fought, why martial arts training was taught in every school, stressed as strongly as the three R's. The Androids had reigned for just under twenty years. During that time the Earth's population had dropped by nearly eighty percent. Her grandfather's generation were the survivors of that slaughter. They'd grown to adulthood in a world where brutal, senseless death was always likely. They'd grown up huddled in ruins like these, surrounded by the artifacts of a better time, burning candles while light bulbs hung uselessly above their heads serving only as reminders of everything that had been lost. 'Places like this changed humanity forever,' Bunny thought.

But even the weight of this place's ghosts could only distract her for a short time.

Bunny considered flaring her ki, surrendering this round of the game. She wasn't really in the mood for Hide and Seek she decided, but she knew she'd never hear the end of it if she threw the first round of a fight on the assumption that she could win later.

'Leave childishness and arrogance to the boys,' Bunny thought. But still, it gave her an idea.

Bunny walked back to the gapping hole in the wall and leapt through it. She landed lightly in the street below then started looking for an appropriate location. Bunny kept her senses peaked, searching for a hint of her mother's ki, listening for any unnatural noise, sniffing the wind for a trace of her mother's distinctive perfume as she scanned her surroundings for something that would provide a thick field of cover. As she moved, Bunny stuck close to the buildings. She kept her movements smooth and slow. Movement drew the eye, Bunny made certain hers minimized that fact. She placed her feet with deliberation, avoiding loose rubble that could shift under her.

After about ten minutes Bunny found the place. In a previous life it had been an overpass. Now it was a maze of broken columns and tilting slabs of concrete.

Minutely Bunny rose her ki, as if she were getting careless, letting it gradually creep back toward her day-to-day levels. She fed that ki into a small, glowing ball then narrowed it's connection to her down to a metaphysical fishing-line. She tapped the ki within herself back down and sent the ball off to meander through the concrete maze. Bunny found a shadowy nitch to hide in the she waited.

It wasn't long before she heard the soft scuff of her mother's sneakers as Corsetta lopped toward the ki she sensed.

Bunny grinned triumphantly. She held her breath and waited for the moment. When her mother was practically on top of her decoy Bunny shoved as much ki as she could down the slender tether and into the ki-ball. The resultant explosion blew Corsetta through two concrete pillars.

A moment later Corsetta shoved the debris off of herself and stood up. She was covered in dust and glowing with a tightly controlled nimbus of power. Her eyes were lit with a demonic light and her long, black hair writhed under the influence of incipient lightening. "Sneaky child," she intoned.

Bunny snorted. "I haven't been impressed by the light-show since grade school, Mom." Still, she was wary. Bunny knew her mother's trick was more than just a light-show. The visual manifestation was only to keep Corsetta's opponents from realizing what they were reacting to when she started mixing bursts of killing intent in with her attacks. Her mother's ki-control was more finely honed than anyone else Bunny had ever heard of and Corsetta used that control to wicked effect.

Anyone with enough raw power to generate a ki-blast could generate an aura warning others that they were dangerous. In fact, once a fighter had that sort of power the real trick was _not_ advertizing it. With experience, fighters learned to modify their aura depending on their intentions. Most fighters developed three 'modes': non-combat, sparring and full-combat. Corsetta could go from completely innocuous to broadcasting the intent of a vengeful goddess in the space of a heartbeat, or a thrown punch. The sudden, shocking shifts in her aura tended to throw-off her opponent's rhythm. The light-show convinced people that they'd already adjusted for Corsetta's intimidation factor so that when she unleashed the real thing it only hit them that much harder.

Corsetta flicked her wrist forward and a small ki-disk flew at Bunny.

Bunny cursed and batted the disk aside. She'd missed seeing her mother preparing the attack while seh'd been watching the special-effects. Bunny shrieked inarticulately, rapidly forcing a large ki-blast into existence, by-passing the niceties of standard moves.

Corsetta twisted to the side and leaned back to let the blast go by. Bunny leapt in, closing with her mother, switching to hand-to-hand combat. Corsetta redirected a few blows then shouted, "Enough!"

"Giving in already?"

"You're fighting angry, daughter," Corsetta said. "Want to discuss it?"

"It's nothing," Bunny said. "Just..." she threw her hands up in the air, "Boys! You know, Bulma's worried sick about Vegeta. It'd do her a world of good if he'd just let her take care of him a bit. And he could use a little TLC after what happened. But no, he's being all tough guy!"

"And there's my little brother and Goku Jr, leaving you behind," Corsetta said knowingly. "You did say 'boys' plural."

Bunny grimaced. "Yeah, I guess. They're such jerks! They act like I don't count because I'm a girl."

"You don't have as much raw power as Goku or my brother," Corsetta cautioned.

"I know!" Bunny exclaimed. "Goku's 99th percentile. Uncle Vegeta and Goku's dad are probably around the 95th, but I've got more raw power than 90 percent of the people on this planet! Besides that, I'm fast and I'm skilled and I keep my head in a fight."

"Usually," Corsetta interjected wryly.

"Doesn't that count for anything?" Bunny demanded. "And it's not just that they replaced me." Bunny sighed. "I think Goku's going nuts."

"How so?"

Bunny shrugged. "He's all stressed out for some reason. He acts like he's getting headaches and his ki is always higher than it should be lately. Plus he acts really weird around Vegeta. One minute he's treating Vegeta like he's made of glass. The next Uncle's pulling them apart because their sparring's gotten totally out of control."

"I don't understand what's going on with him, and I don't like it!" Bunny declared.

* * *

"Itsuni, what's your rush?" Tsukuri-san asked. "Normally you just want buildings to blow-up and heavy objects to lift."

"New exercise regime," Vegeta replied. "You need anything from the office? Other sites?"

"I'll let you know," Tsukuri-san promised with a faint grin.

Vegeta hesitated for a moment, he glanced off to the side over Tsukuri-san's shoulder. "You were right about my over-doing things," he muttered.

Tsukuri-san watched Vegeta pick-up a single I-beam, swing it up to his shoulder the way another man might have done with a shovel, then he jogged up the stairs to the skyscraper they were working on. Vegeta added the I-beam to the growing pile then jogged back down. A few days earlier, Tsukuri-san knew Vegeta would have picked up as much of the pile as he could keep balanced and flown it up.

Tsukuri-san frowned worriedly as he thought of the reasons Vegeta might have changed his habits.

* * *

Bulma's father smiled and shook his head when he saw the 'Do Not Disturb - Genius at Work' sign hanging from the garage door. "I hope you finished your homework first?" he called.

"I've got my priorities in order!" Bulma shouted back through the door. Inside the garage Bulma's schoolbag lay in a corner, forgotten. Her notebook lay open on the table but it had been days since she'd actually taken notes for her classes. Page after page of the notebook was covered in technical sketches and calculations.

Bulma bent over the work-table, her eyes obscured behind protective, magnifying goggles as she delicately soldered circuitry on a fist-sized medallion.

"Done!" Bulma exclaimed fifteen minutes later. She sat back and pushed her goggles to the top of her head. "Now, to test it."

Bulma slipped the medallion's chain over her head, letting it rest against her chest. She took several deep breathes, letting her ki rise and fill her. The medallion vibrated in response to the elevated ki. "Yes!" Bulma shouted. "I can't wait to give this to Vegeta! No! Calibrations first. It's useless until it's calibrated!"

Bulma scooped up her notes, put the medallion in her pocket and raced out. "Mom, Dad, I might be late for dinner. Don't wait up!" she called as she slammed the door and took to the skies.

A short while later Bulma landed outside of the Capsule Corp compound and rang the door bell.

When Trunks Briefs opened the door Bulma's mouth dropped open, all she could do was stare. She'd seen him on TV years ago but never in person. He looked much older than she remembered. His lavender hair had faded to silver. He'd lost much of his muscle mass, leaving him a tall thin scarecrow of a figure. His face was marked with deep lines, and Bulma instantly wanted to know if they'd come from smiles or frowns. But he still had the proud, erect baring she remembered from the TV.

"You're one of my son's students," Trunks remarked as he looked at her curiously. "He brought you here last week, along with Vegeta ...Itsuni."

When his eyes, blue like summer skies, blue like hers, met Bulma's she was overwhelmed with a sudden sense of deja vu and an urge to hug Trunks. Bulma clasped her hands tightly behind her back before she could act on that urge. She could feel her cheeks burning and imagined that they must be all but glowing, she was blushing so fiercely.

"What brings you here Ms..." Trunks prodded gently.

"Bulma Okaeri," she replied quickly, her words almost tripping over themselves as she raced to answer. Anything to distract herself from what she'd almost done. She could just imagine Trunks reading her mind and knowing she'd wanted to hug him and that would be just too embarrassing for words. "I need data, the information Bra-sama collected about Vegeta. I can help." She held up the medallion. "I built this."

Trunks' eyes widened. 'Bulma? With Vegeta? And an inventor? Too much of a coincidence,' he thought.

"I'm sure my daughter would be happy to share her data," Trunks said as he gestured her inside and walked her toward Bra's lab. "So, what does it do?"

"It'll react to Vegeta's ki levels, warn him when it gets too high," Bulma babbled. "Since his brain doesn't. I just need to calibrate it. I don't know how much ki is too much. For him I mean."

Trunks thumbed the intercom. "Daughter, you have company."

"What? Who? Why?" Bra came back a moment later.

"Your brother's student from the other day, Okaeri-san," Trunks replied. "She's got an idea for your data."

The door slid open. "What have you got?" Bra demanded.

"A warning sensor for Vegeta," Bulma replied promptly.

Bra shook her head. "I should have thought of that. You need to know his limits, right?"

Bulma nodded.

"Let me see it," Bra requested. Bulma handed over the medallion and Bra slid it open to reveal the circuitry inside. Then she reached over and pulled out a micro-viewer to get a better look.

"You're the one who built the ki absorbing rig," Bra said.

"Well, I modified the tech from an android part I found," Bulma explained.

"It was a good piece of engineering," Bra replied. She looked Bulma over curiously. "Vegeta's limits won't be static," she remarked, changing subjects between breathes. "You should probably come in every week to re-tune your sensor. Come along when Itsuni gets his check-ups."

"Definitely," Bulma agreed.

"The design looks good," Bra said as she returned the medallion to Bulma and opened a data file. Bra gestured for Bulma to take a seat at the computer. "It's all there, if you've got any questions, just ask."

"Thanks," Bulma said as she slid in front of the terminal.

Bra drifted back toward the door where Trunks stood watching Bulma. "Smooth aren't I?" she fished in a self-satisfied whisper. "Now we'll get to know Itsuni's girlfriend. And give who he, kind of, is..."

"That's far from the only reason to be interested in Bulma Okaeri," Trunks said softly.

* * *

Briefs-sensei glanced up from grading papers at the sound of an uncertain knock on the frame of his classroom's open door.

A tall man with skin heavily weathered from years of exposure to the elements stood in the hallway. He was twisting a dusty baseball cap nervously with callused hands. "Tsukuri Benri," he introduced himself abruptly. "The Responders Dispatch told me I should talk to you about Itsuni?"

Briefs-sensei nodded encouragingly and offered Tsukuri-san a chair.

"The whole emancipated minor thing is a little confusing," Tsukuri-san continued, starting in the middle. "Technically, I figure it means treat him like any of the other guys who work for me. Problem is he's not an adult. Hell, some of _them _lie about injuries when they need the work too bad."

"What happened?" Briefs-sensei prompted.

Tsukuri-san heaved a large sigh. "I know Itsuni thinks part of the appeal of the job is that construction's manual enough to double as a work out. 'Course given him being an S-Class fighter and all, he does things with his bare hands that would normally take heavy machinery. The day I interviewed him I asked what he thought he could do for me. The kid glances over at this old foundation I'd had the guys working at with jack-hammers for half the day and he says: 'Get them out of my way and watch.' I waved the guys off and Itsuni walks out to the middle of this slab of concrete, eighteen meters square and two deep. Then he kneels down and punches it once and damned if the whole thing doesn't just crumble. What else could I say except 'You're hired'."

Briefs-sensei grinned at that.

"This last week though, Itsuni's changed his habits. Looking at how he does things like a work out, he's suddenly going for high repetition and low intensity. That's not normal for him. And he took last week off on account of the Incident. When he came back he was still sporting some bruises. I've been thinking, maybe, he got hurt worse than he's letting on?"

"Kid doesn't know his own limits." Tsukuri-san pressed on without giving Briefs-sensei a chance to respond. "Typical teenager really, thinks he can do anything. Ought to have an adult looking-out for him. I try, but what do I know about S-Classes? I only realize he's gone too far _after _he's half-knocked himself out."

"I've got Itsuni-kun working on endurance," Briefs-sensei said. "And it's not quite as low intensity as you might be thinking, he's wearing roughly a ton of weights at all times."

"Why?" Tsukuri-san asked. "It has something to do with his injuries from the Incident doesn't it? Some sort of rehabilitation therapy?"

"It's about how he was injured, not the injuries themselves," Briefs-sensei explained. "Itsuni-kun is completely recovered. Hover, his body doesn't warn him the way that it should when he's pushing his limits too hard. He's working on fixing things. In the meantime, I've asked him not to use ki-blasts except as an absolute necessity, it's just too easy for Itsuni-kun to over-do it with them."

Tsukuri-san nodded. "I won't assign him any demolish until you let me know he's up for it. Anything else he shouldn't be doing right now?"

"That's the big one," Briefs-sensei said. "Itsuni-kun's new habits will keep him from straining himself as well as improving his ki-capacity."

"Thanks for clearing that up," Tsukuri-san replied. "Itsuni's a good kid, a hard worker. I'd hate to see him get hurt. Especially from something like trying too hard."

Despite what Tsukuri-san had said, Breifs-sensei couldn't help but notice that he still looked troubled. "Is there a problem?" he prompted.

"No, no," Tsukuri-san replied. "It's just, the kid's proud as hell." He shrugged helplessly. "The things he shouldn't be doing right now, that's the stuff I give him bonuses for. It's nothing. I'll just have to think of something new. He shouldn't be working more hours, but without the bonuses he'd barely make enough to cover his rent. I know his landlord... I don't know, maybe I could talk him into giving Itsuni a break on his rent because having an S-Class in the building discourages vandalism or some such. Or at least convince him to tell Itsuni that's the reason. The kid doesn't accept charity, period."

* * *

Goku took a deep breath, held it for a moment and let his 'battle' mind-set settle over him. In the months since Vegeta Itsuni had arrive Goku had learned to keep that mind-set floating just below the surface of his thoughts.

A faint grin tugged at Goku's mouth. Grandpa Gohan, his dad, Uncle Vegeta and Great-Uncle Trunks had all been after him for years to be ready to fight at a moment's notice. Scolding and lecturing and more scolding. All he'd need was a jittery classmate with a vicious right-hook for proper motivation.

'Just a little competition,' Goku thought. His grin turned fierce, that was the great thing about Vegeta: He played _hard_, played to win.

Goku called to mind how Vegeta's ki had felt in the moments before he'd Ascended. Like ice melting, you kept pouring energy in but the temperature stayed the same. Then it became something new. He brought up his ki to the limit. Goku didn't try to push past that limit. Instead he let it pool and swirl behind the barrier, mapping out it's shape and form. He tried to work threads of ki around the barrier and pull it down.

A warning ache started in the back of Goku's skull. He bit his lip and forced himself to ignore the warning.

Goku came to lying flat on his back in the middle of his backyard.

'It should have been you,' a not-voice whispered in Goku's mind.

Goku shook his head and frowned. 'I'm not jealous of Vegeta?' he thought in confusion. He remembered Vegeta screaming in rage, lashing out blindly at everything around him in the moments before he'd Ascended. He remembered Vegeta jumping at shadows in class, always haunted by fury and fear and he cringed. No, the last thing he felt about Vegeta was jealousy. But that thought that had been circling around his brain after he'd knocked himself silly...

Goku sighed, everyone had always expected him to be the one who'd recover the ability to Ascend. He didn't want to let them down. And he loved competing with Vegeta, loved having someone he could spar against as an equal. He didn't want to be left behind.

It had never happened before. All his life Goku had been catching up with paragons like Trunks, Gohan, his Uncle Vegeta and his dad. Gohan and Trunks had gotten old, Goku knew he'd never match up to what they had been, but time robbed them of their strength before Goku had truly come into his. His uncle and father still took him to the cleaners in three out of five matches but they both swore it was because of Goku's lack of concentration and Goku knew they were telling the truth. Back in grade-school he and Bunny had sparred constantly, it had been their favorite game. But between his fourteenth and fifteenth birthdays Goku had grown a foot and it had occurred to him that Bunny was a pretty, petite girl and the last person on Earth that he wanted to hit.

'If Vegeta perfects Ascention and I can't, there won't be any reason for him to really spar with me anymore,' Goku thought with a grimace. 'It'd be like when I spar with the other guys in class. I can help them improve, if I'm patient, careful and pay attention no matter how boring it gets but it's not fun.

"I'm not jealous of Vegeta," Goku concluded. "I just don't want ot be left behind and I don't want to let anyone down. So the answer's simple: I just keep at it until I get it right."

Determinedly Goku hopped back to this feet and began gathering his ki again.

* * *

Briefs-Sensei paused to double check the address of the small, nondescript office. It had taken more than a few calls to find out who he should be talking to, but after Tsukuri-san's visit, he could hardly think about anything else.

Given what Tsukuri-san had said Briefs-sensei figured that arranging the mechanics would be a simple matter in comparison to getting Itsuni-kun to accept the help. With that thought in mind it had been disheartening to encounter difficulties with the mechanics.

Itsuni was legally an adult, but until he was actually eighteen Social Services were supposed to keep an eye on him, to make sure it was working out, just like they would have done had he been placed in another foster-home. Only from what Briefs-sensei could see they'd washed their hands of him ten minutes after he'd been emancipated.

When having his calls forwarded from one department to the next began to feel like walking a mobius strip Briefs-sensei decided on a more direct approach and asked for the name and location of the last person who'd been responsible for Vegeta's case. Then he'd decided to drop by her office in person.

Briefs-sensei glanced around the office, picked out the name plate he was looking for then walked over and announced himself. "Hello, I'm Vegeta Briefs. You are Bridget Uwasa-san, Vegeta Itsuni's case-worker?"

He's an emancipated minor now," she said. Her tone said, "Not my problem anymore."

Briefs-sensei gave her a disapproving look, after a moment she glanced away.

"I meant to transfer his file over to someone local after he moved," Uwasa confessed. "But he's extremely mature for his age. I felt he was making a reasonable choice when he applied for emancipation. I was certain he'd be fine on his own. Finding someone to check up on him just wasn't a high priority."

"We've established that you're responsible for Itsuni-kun's case, since you never forwarded his paperwork," Briefs-sensei said. "Good, we're finally making progress."

Briefs-sensei took a seat across from Uwasa. "I'm a teacher at Itsuni-kun's school and while he is quite capable, he's also sixteen. He shouldn't be worrying about how to pay rent. Itsuni-kun is a good student, he has the potential to be one of the world's top martial artists, possibly on par with my father, Trunks Briefs. My family already sponsors a number of college scholarships, it shouldn't be too difficult to arrange a stipend for Itsuni-kun's living expenses until he's finished with his education."

Uwasa stared at Briefs-sensei in befuddlement as she tried to catch up with his rapid shift from her delinquent paperwork to a stipend for Vegeta. "Um, wouldn't that call intoquestion the whole emancipation thing?" she blurted out.

Briefs-sensei started to reply, then his eyes narrowed as he reassessed their conversation. "You don't check up on Itsuni-kun, and you make sure no one else will either. You object to the idea of someone helping him. What's your problem with this kid? You haven't even asked what brought me here. You did fail to check on him, now I'm here asking about why that is. Even if common decency doesn't prompt you in that direction, I'd think you'd want to know how much trouble your mislaid paperwork has landed you in."

Uwasa's face screwed up into a disinterested expression. "So, who tried to kill him this time?" she asked casually.

"What!" Briefs-sensei exclaimed.

"You didn't realize? Between surviving the explosion that killed his parents and the thing with his most recent foster-father impaling him on a chunk of iron Vegeta Itsuni has been beaten, stabbed, poisoned, run-over, shot and set on fire." Uwasa ticked off the attacks Vegeta had survived on her fingers as Briefs-sensei stared at her in shock.

"At first you think 'How horrible! That poor kid!'" Uwasa tilted her head to the side. "But it happens again and again. And pretty soon you have to wonder: What is it about this kid that makes people want to kill him? Nice normal people. This one? A sixty-year old widow who'd been fostering kids for decades, sweetest lady you could hope to meet. One night she shoves wedges under his bedroom door and burns her own house down with him sleeping inside. Mark my words: Where that kid goes, ruination follows. Do you realize how many people are sitting in prison because of him?"

"Because _they _attacked _him_," Briefs-sensei reminded her sharply.

Uwasa shrugged. "Once or twice, maybe I'd buy it. He doesn't believe it's their fault either. He's never once testified against anyone for trying to kill him."

"When Vegeta Itsuni decided he was better off taking care of himself I was delighted. If he took it into his head to become a hermit, I'd move Heaven and Earth to give him the opportunity. The further he stays away from the rest of us, the less damage he'll do," Uwasa declared. "Some people just aren't meant to be around people."


	9. Complications

**Second Chances**

**Chapter Nine: Complications**

**Disclaimer: **Characters and premise are the property of Akira Toriyama, I'm just borrowing them for a little non-profit fun.

* * *

Briefs-sensei stared through the transparasteel window with a sort of morbid fascination. On the other side of the barrier was a man of average height with dark brown hair and matching eyes. He would have been nondescript except for the smooth, controlled grace with which he held himself and the heavy ki-disruption collar around his throat. His face was a mask, empty of expression, every thought carefully hidden behind shuttered eyes and rigid control.

'Too controlled,' Briefs-sensei thought. He wondered what he'd expected Tomadachi Teki to look like.

Tomodachi sat down on his side of the transparasteel and waited silently.

"Vegeta Itsuni?" Briefs-sensei said. The name was half-accusation, half-question.

For a moment Tomodachi's mask cracked and his eyes were alive with remorse and a touch of bewilderment. Then they went dark. "How is he?" Tomodachi asked.

"Better," Briefs-sensei said coldly. "The hole in his chest healed over. It's just another scar now."

Tomodachi closed his eyes briefly. "You want to know what happened," he said after a long silence. "All I can tell you is one afternoon I walked into the kitchen and my wife screamed. I looked down and I was covered in blood."

Briefs-sensei looked skeptical.

"I wish I knew more, I wish I knew why I tried to kill a kid in my care. A kid I've know since he was four. Maybe then I could know that whatever happened then won't happen again," Tomodachi said tiredly.

Briefs-sensei's expression became more open as he accepted the possibility that Tomodachi really might not know why he'd nearly killed his foster-son. "You weren't the only one to attack him without apparent reason. I need to figure out why this keeps happening. Someone has to put a stop to it."

"That was what I was trying to do," Tomodachi said. "I was first on the scene the night his parents died. That was how I met Vegeta. The first time I saw him I knew he was going to need training. He'd instinctively unlocked his ki-potential when he survived the wreck. He had too much power to take things slowly or wait until he was older."

Briefs-sensei nodded. Even as thin as Saiyan blood had become Bunny and Goku had been kept apart from other children until they could control their greater strength to prevent accidents. And still Goku had crippled a man while he was in preschool because he hadn't understood the relative fragility of normal people.

"After I found Vegeta a teacher I didn't expect to see him again, but things kept happening. I investigated his parents' deaths, then his god-father abusing him, then a teacher locking him in the school cafeteria's walk-in freezer. And his living situation wasn't getting any better either. It just didn't end. There was nothing I could do about totally random lunatics. Vegeta has always seemed to attract lunatics. People he's never see before will try to run him over, one tried to shoot him. There's no reason, he doesn't know them, they don't know him. Sometimes I wonder if that's what happened to his parents. There's never been proof that the explosion was anything other than an accident but Vegeta firmly believes they were murdered."

"I couldn't do anything about that, about the random attacks, but I thought I could give him a safe home... You know how that worked out." Tomodachi finished with bitter regret.

"I hadn't heard anything about random attacks," Briefs-sensei said. Every time he turned around dealing with Vegeta's problems became more complicated. Vegeta couldn't concentrate on correcting his ki-imbalance because he had to make living. Briefs-sensei started looking into Vegeta's financial situation only to find a more urgent issue in a string of attempts on his student's life. And now he was becoming increasingly convinced that there was no reason for the attacks, at least not a reason known to Vegeta's attackers.

"You wouldn't," Tomodachi said. "The only way I ever learned about any of it was because he got hurt or because someone else witnessed the attack."

Briefs-sensei couldn't even pretend to be surprised.

"There is more thing," Tomodachi said. "I've been sparring with Vegeta since he was a kid. It's always been the best way to get him to open up. I haven't been able to consistently win against him since he was seven. In a real fight between us, there was no possible way I could have walked away uninjured."

Briefs-sensei started.

"So either Vegeta held back. Or whatever caused my insanity and black-out also increased my powers," Tomodachi finished.

* * *

Bulma waited impatiently at the corner where her path to school joined with Vegeta's. She tapped her foot and glanced at the time on her cell-phone. 'How dare he be on time when I'm too excited to sleep and got here early,' she thought only half-jokingly.

Several minutes later she spotted Vegeta coming down the street. "Finally!" Bulma exclaimed. Before Vegeta could protest she added, "Made something for you!"

Bulma leaned in to kiss Vegeta as she draped the medallion over his head. "It'll let you know when you're using too much ki. I don't want you to get caught up in a spar or something and hurt yourself," she explained.

Vegeta picked up the medallion to look at it. He wrinkled his nose. "Can I give it back and get another kiss?"

"No," Bulma replied promptly. "But if you keep it on and pay attention to it's warnings... Then there's plenty more where that came from."

Vegeta slid the medallion under his shirt. "Bribing me with sex? I like your style."

"I thought you would," Bulma replied coyly.

Then she pulled back and gave him a serious look. "You have to be careful," she admonished. "Remember what Bra-sama said: Now that you've broken the Ascension barrier you're going to be more prone to big ki jumps. It'll be easier than ever for you to get to the point where it's dangerous."

Vegeta gave her a rather pointed and disgruntled look. Bulma mimed zipping her lips, silently agreeing not to fuss anymore.

They continued on to school together. After a block or so Bulma tucked her hand into the crook of Vegeta's elbow.

Bunny joined them at the front gate. "Hey guys, the baseball game's been rescheduled for the Friday after next. The baked foods auction is back on," she said to Bulma. "The pep rally with you and Goku sparring is back on," she said to Vegeta, "If you're up to it?"

Vegeta glared at her.

"Of course, silly me, you'd be ready to spar even if you were on your deathbed," Bunny rolled her eyes. "So everything the same but three weeks late on account of the Incident. Nothing new."

"I heard there are more natural disasters now, because of the Androids," Bulma remarked.

Bunny shrugged. "Who remembers what it was like before? Who talks about the frequency of earthquakes and volocanos? Just that everything was better. Anyway, you're still on for manning the booth during the second and fifth innings, right?"

Bulma nodded.

"And Vegeta, you'll come to the game?"

"No."

"What?"

"Missed too much work already."

"That's not fair," Bulma protested. "It was an Incident and you were hurt."

Vegeta shrugged. "They don't pay me for not coming to work."

At the first bell the three of them made their way to class. Five minutes after the second bell Goku walked into the room.

"Goku, you're late," Briefs-sensei pointed out. He was surprised that Goku wasn't running or babbling excuses.

"Sorry," Goku said. "I was working on a new technique. I lost track of the time."

"All right, take your seat," Briefs-sensei sighed. "But five minutes is more than I can let skate. I am marking you tardy rather than giving you lunch-detention.

Goku's expression became pained. "You're calling Mom on me?" he whined.

"Keep a better eye on the clock, and right now, take your seat," Briefs-sensei said. "We've taken up enough class-time."

Goku groaned as he dropped into his chair. He slumped dejectedly. Several times during class Bunny caught him superstitiously rubbing his temples.

During the break between classes Bunny got up and stalked over to Goku's seat. She stopped directly in front of him and planted her fists on her hips, "Drop your ki. You've been holding it way too high all morning. I'll bet that's why you've got a headache."

"Mind your own business Bunny," Goku sighed.

"You're being stupid," Bunny snapped. Then she spun on her heel and stomped back to her own seat.

By History, their last class before the lunch break, Goku was tapping his foot impatiently, paying no attention to their teacher. Impulsively he spun around in his seat then leaned over and grabbed Vegeta's arm to get his attention. "Wanna-" He started to ask.

Vegeta lashed out, kicked the back of Goku's chair. Goku leapt up, just evading the kick that reduced his chair to kindling.

Bulma and Bunny winced, but joined their teacher staring in stunned disbelief when Goku leapt_ at _Vegeta, escalating the fight.

Goku knocked Vegeta to the ground, pinning him and drawing back a fist. Vegeta grabbed Goku's shirt and flipped him. Goku's body smashed through a desk behind them. In a flash both boys were on their feet, toe-to-toe, pounding on one another.

They'd been trained to always be aware of their surroundings and even now when good sense went out the window their training held. Aware of the building over their heads and their relatively frail classmates around them they both kept to close-quarters combat.

Vegeta grabbed Goku's shoulder a beat before throwing a punch, ensuring he didn't knock the other boy through a wall if the punch landed. Goku twisted, absorbing some of the force of Vegeta's strike. He caught Vegeta's extended arm and yanked him forward as he drove a knee into the shorter boy's gut.

Vegeta doubled over. Snarling breathlessly he willed himself to straighten abruptly and smashed his skull into Goku's jaw. Goku's teeth clicked together hard enough to crack enamel as Vegeta hooked an ankle around Goku's leg and tumbled him to the ground.

Goku rolled aside before Vegeta could drive an elbow into him. Still on the floor he threw his own punch, snapping Vegeta's head violently to the side.

Bunny shook off her shock as the boys came to their feet again. "Bulma, you trust Vegeta? With your life? Right now?"

Bulma nodded, still staring at the boys in disbelief.

"Grab him, Goku's mine." Bunny leapt on Goku's back, she wrapped her legs around him, pinning his arms to his sides. "You've got girl-cooties," she sing-songed into his ear.

Bulma grabbed Vegeta's shoulders and hauled back with all her strength. "Vegeta, stop," she pled.

"Bunny! Cut it out!" Goku whined.

"Are you completely insane Woman?" Vegeta demanded, glaring at Bulma.

"Good question, but not for her," Briefs-sensei said as he burst into the room. He looked pointedly at the damage caused by the fight. "What were you two thinking? Assuming you were thinking at all." He glared at them. "I want to see the two of you in the teacher's lounge, right now. We are going to have a long and serious talk about this."

Goku untangled himself from Bunny and the two boys silently preceded Briefs-sensei down the hall. Once the door shut behind them the boys turned to face their teacher.

"The two of you are likely the two most powerful individuals currently alive on this planet," Briefs-sensei stated quietly. "And you get in a brawl with each other in the middle of a classroom. What is wrong with you?"

Vegeta and Goku glanced at each other, looking for clues as to the appropriate response.

Briefs-sensei sighed tiredly. "Actually, Vegeta, you're excused from answering. I've got a fairly good notion of what your reply should be: You're paranoid, which is perfectly reasonable given the number of attempts on your life. You also probably have some degree of PTSD, again totally understandable."

Vegeta gritted his teeth and glared angrily past his teacher.

"But," Briefs-sensei continued holding up his hand to postpone any argument, "the severity of your reactions varies. Have there been any more attacks since you moved here? Is that why you're ready to jump out of your skin on some days but not others?"

"No attacks." Vegeta grimaced. He considered, if Briefs-sensei knew enough to ask, withholding information would probably only get him in more trouble. "Just threats. He hasn't set his hooks deeply enough in anyone _here _for an attack. Not yet."

"He? You know-"

"No," Vegeta snapped. "If I knew I would have done something! He killed my parents. Phantom won't come out and fight me. I don't give a damn about his puppets."

"Have you told the police?" Briefs-sensei asked.

Vegeta snorted. "They're morons. But why else would total strangers attack me? Phantom's making them."

Briefs-sensei frowned as he compared what Vegeta had told him with the information he'd dug up on his own. "If there are any more threats, if anything suspicious happens, you will tell me about it. Immediately, day or night." he ordered.

Vegeta rolled his eyes. Briefs-sensei waited, watching him seriously. Vegeta sighed. "Fine," he agreed unenthusiastically.

Briefs-sensei turned to the other half of his most recent problem. "Your turn Goku. What the hell is wrong with you? You know better than to get in a fight in the middle of class. And that _was_ a fight, not a spar, you know the difference."

"He kicked me, I reacted. That's what you want me to do isn't it?" Goku should have sounded like a typical, teenaged brat but there was an uncertainty under-lying the argumentativeness.

"I might have bought that at the beginning of the term," Briefs-sensei said. "But you know better. You know Vegeta's only reacting to being startled. And you know he reacts more strongly to you because your power-level means you rate as more of a threat than most people. You know to hold back and stay on the defensive until he recovers himself. You know better than to escalate things. I've been watching you deal with Vegeta's nerves since the term started, don't try to tell me now that you can't."

"Sorry Vegeta," Goku said quietly. "Been thinking about sparring all day. That's what I was trying to ask: If you wanted to see if we could get a spar in after lunch. Then, well, I don't know. I was thinking about fighting, then you kicked at me and, well, things went from there."

"As if a fight bothers me," Vegeta muttered.

Goku grinned translating Vegeta's statement to 'Apology accepted.'

"Goku, to be honest, I'm not quite sure what to do with you. This isn't like you. Also I'm not sure it's fair to punish you when I'm not going to punish Vegeta." Briefs-sensei sighed. "But Goku, I do hold you more responsible. You can't get in the habit of making mistakes like that. You have too much power for that. I'll be speaking with your parents and my father about this, maybe together we can figure out how to make sure this doesn't happen again."

* * *

Dende's eyes widened in surprise as he noticed Briefs-sensei sitting on the edge of the Lookout, his legs dangling out into the emptiness as he stared down at the world far, far below. "Suddenly I've become terribly popular... Or you have more questions about something that is really none of your business."

"An awful lot of people must have died hating Prince Vegeta," Briefs-sensei said. "People who, like the Saiyans, can't be reincarnated back into their own species. Because Prince Vegeta didn't just kill them, he killed their entire planet."

"Yes and?" Dende urged him to make his point.

"People attack Vegeta Itsuni for reasons they can't remember or understand. He thinks it's some sort of grand conspiracy. But could they be Prince Vegeta's victims reborn?" Briefs-sensei asked.

Then he rushed on. "It isn't right! Prince Vegeta was punished while he still had the knowledge of what he'd done, by King Enma. They don't have the right to judge him, to keep on hurting him. They're only perpetuating a cycle of violence."

"Wait!" Dende interrupted. "They're not."

"Because we don't remember our past lives?" Briefs-sensei asked. "That's crap. It wasn't hard to realize who Bulma Okaeri had to be once you'd confirmed that Itsuni is Prince Vegeta reborn. It took her about five seconds to fall in love with him all over again. Don't tell me something hasn't carried over from her previous life. And Vegeta doesn't trust anyone, but he trusts her. She grabbed him when he was in the middle of a fight, anyone else he would have attacked on instinct, her he listens to."

"First, the gods aren't stupid," Dende said. "The whole Saiyan problem started because they entered the intergalactic community too early in their species' development. Due to the Androids, large scale human interest in space travel will be pushed back generations. You're busy rebuilding and repopulating this planet. It will be a very long time, if ever, before the need for more resources or more space will drive you to look beyond the Earth. It's another reason to put the Saiyans here: the Earth's isolation from other planets. The races they slaughtered go elsewhere."

"Oh," Briefs-sensei replied, slightly embarrassed by his rant.

"Second. Bulma and Vegeta's situation is special. Their souls are bound to one another in a way that eclipses life and death. Don't smile, romantic or not, it's not a good thing." Dende insisted. "Bulma could have gone on to a higher plane of existence. She was ready, except for one thing. Without Vegeta she wouldn't have been complete. For good or ill, their fates are bound together."

Dende observed Briefs-sensei's expression. "And you still think it's romantic. Realize it's not just love that can bind a pair of souls. It's intense, shared emotion. Hatred works just as well as love. You're planet's history tells of one such pair, who's personal animosity carried from life to life and eventually they dragged whole nations into war over their grudge."

"But that's also the final reason why Prince Vegeta's victims lashing out at his reincarnation isn't the cause of Itsuni's problems: Hatred can form chains to bind one soul to another, but it must be reciprocated. Billions died at Prince Vegeta's hands, but they meant little to him. For them to recognize him as their killer in their next lives there would have to be a resonance, something in him which recognized them in return."

Briefs-sensei scowled. "And even Prince Vegeta didn't have enough enemies to explain all the attacks, especially if they're not being reincarnated here on Earth." He shook his head. "It made so much sense. I mean there has to be some reason behind the attacks. Maybe the kid's right, maybe there is some mastermind behind it. It makes more sense than thinking he's some sort of plague carrier, infecting people around him with violent lunacy."

Dende's eyes widened. "Vegeta doesn't, but a Dark Soul could," he said. He leapt to his feet. "There's one in particular. I need to speak with King Enma, immediately. We need to make sure that monster is still in the deepest pits of Hell, where he belongs. You can see yourself out, I have to go."

* * *

**Author's Note: ** The story Dende is referring to is one of the pre-tales for "_**Táin Bó Cúailnge**_" an Irish folktale about a feuding pair who continue their feud in many different forms before being reborn as bulls the ownership of whom results in a war between two kingdoms... then the two bulls fight one another and both end up dead. _**  
**_


	10. Dinner Dates

**Second Chances**

**Chapter Ten: Dinner Dates**

**Disclaimer: **Characters and premise are the property of Akira Toriyama, I'm just borrowing them for a little non-profit fun.

* * *

Vegeta spun at the sound of a loud crack. The world snapped into the ultra-clarity of battle as Bulma's medallion began buzzing annoyingly against his chest.

He tried to tap down his ki even as he searched for potential threats.

The people around Vegeta seemed to move in slow motion but a spike of panic pointed him toward the trouble. A snapped guy-wire which had been stabilizing a huge crane that was lifting the giant structural beams into place twirled toward the ground. Without it the long arm of the crane was toppling, taking out the half-finished structure near it as it fell. Smaller beams and bits of rubble rained down on the site.

One big blast could disintegrate the whole mess. Vegeta's impulse was to unleash the largest blast he could summon, but if he missed anything chances were he'd be unconscious and unable to do anything about it, as the buzzing medallion reminded him.

Vegeta snarled a curse as he used a minor ki-blast to deal with the smell but still potentially deadly debris. Then he gave the crane quick shove to rebalance it for a second or two. In the time he'd bought Vegeta leapt into the air. Quickly he gathered the still falling beams and tossed them somewhere harmless. That done he caught the still falling crane and eased it to the ground.

Vegeta landed and put a hand over Bulma's agitated medallion. Even though he'd opted against the brute-force method of dealing with the crisis he'd still exceeded the limits set on him during his race against gravity. He took a deep breath, reminded himself that the crisis was over and let go of the ki he'd raised.

A moment before it went still the medallion almost seemed to purr at him, pleased he'd stopped doing something potentially harmful to himself. 'Of course I don't need it,' Vegeta thought. "I could remember Mad-Scientist Briefs' limits without it."

'It wasn't entirely unpleasant, to be reminded that Bulma cared,' he admitted to himself.

"Itsuni, you okay?" Tsukuri-san asked as he dropped a hand on Vegeta's shoulder.

The medallion resumed it's urgent warning as Vegeta's ki shot up. He jerked away from Tsukuri-san and fell into a wary stance.

'Just an accident, not a prelude to an attack,' Vegeta told himself, remembering the previous day's debacle with Goku.

"Didn't mean to startle you kid."

Vegeta straightened. "I'm fine. Everyone else?"

"You got it all," Tsukuri-san assured him.

"Had enough pratice," Vegeta remarked, thinking about his first Sensei and Incident-commander. Then he grimaced as he remembered how that relationship, like too many others had ended. He glanced at Tsukuri-san with renewed wariness.

'No,' Vegeta reminded himself. 'That's what Phantom wants me to think. He is my only real enemy. To think anything else is to fall for his trap.'

* * *

After school let out, three days after the fight during History, followed by another bizarrely tentative spar during BBB a day later, Bunny decided to fly out to the Sons' for a private, uninterrupted chat with Goku about what the hell was going on.

Bunny grimaced, the spar might have been restrained on Goku's side. Vegeta had been pushing both the imposed limits on his ki and his creativity. He'd ended by storming off in disgust when Goku refused to seriously go on the offensive.

Bunny landed in the Sons' front yard. She considered going straight for Goku but she knew that would only inspire nosiness.

"Bunny-dear, what brings you all the way out here?" Vidalia called. "You'll stay for dinner, of course."

"How could I not?" Bunny replied. "When have you ever let anyone leave your house without feeding them first?"

"Saiyan blood dear," Vidalia replied. "You know how it is, food and fighting, not much out ranks those two. Just because I want my son to work the muscles between his ears as the well as the ones below his neck, don't forget that my blood runs as thick as yours."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Bunny said with a grin. Then she heard a small rustle of grass and turned in time to snatch Goku's younger sister out of the air.

Far from being upset at the failure of her sneak attack the seven-year-old beamed worshipfully at Bunny.

"Almost Fidgets," Bunny said playfully.

"You never come over anymore." The dark-haired little girl wrinkled her nose at Bunny's nickname for her. "Is big brother being a stupid-head? I'll make him sorry."

Bunny laughed, knowing exactly how much chaos Goku's younger sister could cause for him. For a moment she was tempted to turn the little hellion loose on him. "You know I spend weekends at my dad's," she said instead.

"Your parents need to get married again. That way you wouldn't have to waste so much time on them," Fidgets declared. "You need to spend more time with me!"

Bunny patted Fidgets on the had as she set her back on the ground. "I'm eating dinner with you tonight."

"Then could we gang up on Big Brother?" Fidgets asked. "His head's getting all swelled."

"He's not sparring with you?" Bunny translated.

"He says I might get hurt," Fidgets pouted.

"That mean boy," Bunny declared. But she frowned thoughtfully, wondering if it was something to do with Goku's slight habit of sexism that cropped up when it came to her fighting or if it was related to his sudden reluctance to spar with Vegeta.

After Goku's disastrous first Martial Arts Tournament he'd vehemently refused to spar with anyone other than his mentors for months out of fear that he'd hurt someone again. Bunny had eventually gotten fed up with it and had spent a week relentlessly pestering him until he'd finally lost his temper and relearned that Bunny was quite capable of holding her own. 'Well, at least until he had his growth spurt,' she admitted to herself.

"So you'll do it? You'll help me get him?" Fidgets demanded.

"We'll see," Bunny temporized. "After dinner. I wouldn't dare risk your mother's wrath by distracting him from his chores."

Fidgets shivered. "Mommy can withhold sweets practically forever," she confided, agreeing with Bunny's judgment.

"But since I'm here, I ought to lend a hand," Bunny offered.

"Goku is setting water on the north field," Vidalia said. "We're going to have a nice radish crop for sale come fall." She smiled with satisfaction. "Those new terraces my husband and I cut are paying off beautifully."

Bunny smiled and nodded. A city-girl through and through she couldn't quite grasp the Sons' deep attachment to their remote farm, but she knew better than to question it.

"I've got enough chores of my own," Fidgets huffed. "I'm not helping Big Brother with his!"

Bunny carefully hid her smirk as the most prominent obstacle to a private conversation with Goku stomped off in disgust.

"Speaking of your chores..." Vidalia called after her. "The chickens haven't been fed nor the eggs gathered."

Bunny waved and took flight. A few moments later she landed beside Goku. He'd just finished priming an old pump and was watching patiently as the baffled ditch at the top of the field filled with water.

"Now I know what I'm getting your dad for his next birthday," Bunny remarked. "That pump belongs in a museum. We've got to have something better at Capsule Corp."

Goku rolled his eyes. "With all sorts of complicated, unnecessary bits and bobs to break or wear out." He patted the old pump handle fondly, "This does the job year in, year out."

"Luddite." Bunny said with a playful shake of her head. "I told your mom I'd help with the chores."

Goku watched the ditch fill for a few more minutes. "You carry the pipes," he said, then shrugged apologetically at his lack of gallantry. "You suck at setting them."

Bunny shrugged then gingerly picked up a stack of gently curved, thin aluminum syphon tubes. She balanced the dirty pipes on her out-stretched hand, keeping them far from her pretty clothes. Goku snickered at her fastidiousness.

They walked along opposite ditch banks, Bunny holding the pipes, Goku taking them one by one and smoothly starting the water flowing through them into the field as they walked.

"So what's up with you and Vegeta?" Bunny asked after a few minutes.

Goku made a face. "I already talked about the fight with Uncle... And with Dad... And with Trunks. I don't think I can take another lecture about responsibility."

"I was thinking, maybe... Maybe I should cancel the spar for the pep-rally next Friday," Bunny said.

Goku hesitated. "You don't have to do that. Even with the limit Vegeta's still loads better than the rest of the class."

Bunny stuck her tongue out at him. "Thanks bunches."

"You're a girl. I don't wanna fight with you," Goku said.

"Try sparring with me," Bunny challenged. "We used to do it all the time."

"What were we talking about?" Goku asked, trying to get off that particular tangent.

"Yeah, you haven't exactly been sparring with Vegeta either lately... Except when you're fighting with him," Bunny said. "Your balance is all off; you're either holding back too much or going too far. And, by the way, your ki is running high, _again_. What's wrong with you?"

Goku didn't say anything.

Bunny turned and glared up at him. "We don't keep secrets from each other. Remember?"

Goku glanced away, he already had one secret he'd been keeping for a few years, one he had no intention of telling Bunny, just in case she didn't feel the same way.

Bunny kept up a steady glare. "We tell each other everything. You told me about not actually liking all the wilderness crap our families push you into. I told you about it when my parents first stopped liking each other. We used to talk to each other, about everything. What happened?"

Goku sighed and gave in. "The last month or so I've been sensing some sort of ki-creature creeping around in my head. He's an ugly thing, all malice and hatred. He whispers things."

Bunny's eyes darkened with concern. "Goku, you haven't told anyone? Not Uncle Vegeta or Granny Pan even?"

"After Vegeta ascended I tried to see if I could do it too," Goku continued. "You know how they all expect me to. Knocked myself silly a few times trying, but I noticed something: The ki-thing, when my guard's down he's worse, but running my ki real high keeps him from bothering me. It's like white-noise blocking him out. I figure if I shape my ki just right I could push him out of my head all together. But he really hates Vegeta. He gets stronger when Vegeta's around. I think it's out of shear determination to hurt him."

"This isn't something can just _not _tell about," Bunny said. "This is an attack, an enemy. You've got to tell them."

"NO!" Goku exclaimed. "They're all counting on me to be the planet's next defender and everything. What'll they think if I can't even protect my own head? They'll be so disappointed. I've practically got this figured out Bunny. Once I know how to push him out of me, I'll tell them about him."

Bunny grimaced. "All right," she agreed reluctantly. "But if I think you're losing it, I'm telling Uncle."

"Okay," Goku replied. "But only if I mess this up."

"And I really think we should cancel the spar. You said this thing had an issue with Vegeta."

"I can handle it," Goku insisted.

"Like the other day in History?" Bunny asked.

Goku winced. "They both caught me off guard. I know what to expect now. I've got it under control."

"Well, you keep me up to date," Bunny ordered. "No secrets. Not between us."

They fell back into silence.

"So," Bunny said after a few moments. "Your little sister wants my help to beat you up after dinner. You're being a meanie who won't spar with her."

"If you're here it should be okay," Goku said reluctantly. "The thing in my head really hates Vegeta, but there isn't anyone or anything that it doesn't hate at least casually." He shrugged. "I trust Vegeta to look after himself, but even a little slip with the squirt could turn out really bad."

"Okay, expect to be ambushed as soon as you're clear of the table after dinner," Bunny warned. "Patience isn't Fidgets' strong suit."

Goku grinned. "What's patience good for anyway? I'll make sure to get out of the house fast Mom hates it if we smash her furniture, or her walls."

"Parents are strange like that," Bunny said dryly.

* * *

Bulma sat on a low concrete wall across the street from the site where Vegeta was working. A picnic basket sat beside her. She leaned back and shaded her eyes with her hand as she tried to pick Vegeta out among the dozens of tiny figures moving about on the upper reaches of the skyscraper's lofty frame. She smiled as she noticed one figure, smaller than the others, holding a large beam while several of his co-workers riveted it in place. Despite what had to be stunning impacts as the rivets were driven through solid steel the small man held the beam rock steady.

Bulma waved cheerfully.

Fifteen stories above, one of the riveters noticed. "Hey kid, ain't that your girl?"

"Devoted ain't she?" Another laughed. "You got a ring for her yet?"

Vegeta's face colored. "None of your business."

A few grins were exchanged over Vegeta's head. The kid was such an easy mark when it came to teasing. Still, given what he was capable they were careful about how far they pushed it.

"Best speak up soon. Pretty little think like that, someone's gonna snap her up soon." That remark earned the speaker an astonishingly potent death-glare. The offender held up his hands in surrender. "Just kidding Itsuni."

"Well, you know kids today. Marriage is probably the last thing on their minds."

" 'Til someone gets knocked up."

Brilliantly red now, Vegeta glared at all of them. Then he collected his dignity. "You must all lead amazingly _boring _lives," he declared.

"Back to work!" Tsukuri-san called from the other side of the tower's unfinished frame.

* * *

When Vegeta finished for the evening Bulma was still waiting for him. "Hi," she said. She held up the basket. "Wanna go on a picnic? I would have called but your cell phone wasn't working."

"It got crushed during the fight last week," Vegeta replied. "I haven't gotten around to replacing it."

"I would have stopped by your place once you were done working," Bulma continued. "Then I realized you've never mentioned where you live."

She gave Vegeta a moment to rectify that oversight. Vegeta thought about her parent's home in contrast with the old, run-down apartment building where he lived and declined to reply.

"So," Bulma said after a moment. "Picnic?"

"I've got homework," Vegeta said with a grimace.

"So what?" Bulma asked. "So do I. It'll wait."

She handed Vegeta the picnic basket then took his free hand. "I've got just the place in mind," she said as she tugged him up into the air after her.

Fifteen minutes later they alighted on an isolated stretch of beach. Bulma promptly kicked off her sandals. "From here we walk."

Vegeta gave her a doubtful look.

Bulma grinned. "It'll be worth it," she promised.

"Whatever," Vegeta surrendered. He stalked toward the water.

"Not like that." Bulma looked pointedly at his shoes.

"No."

"Sand in shoes is a pain, sand between bares toes is great," Bulma declared. "Trust me."

"No."

"Please? You won't look silly. Besides, it's just you, me, the sand and the sea," Bulma argued. She sighed. "You've been pretty tight-strung lately, I thought this might help. Give it a chance?"

"Do I get to eat sooner if I give in?" Vegeta asked.

"Of course. You have no idea how stubborn I can be when I've got a notion," Bulma said.

"I find it remarkably easy to picture," Vegeta replied smugly. "So, since I want to eat before the food rots, I'll put up with your ridiculousness."

Bulma rolled her eyes and shook her head as Vegeta bent down to untie his shoes. He neatly tucked his socks into each shoe as he removed it, carefully not putting his foot down on the sand until it was bare. Then he tied the shoes together and hung them over his shoulder. He picked up the picnic basket again. Bulma reclaimed his free hand.

They walked down the beach, following the line of still damp sand left in the wake of the receding tide. Bulma led them along the curving coast until she found the perfect angle for watching the sun set. They retreated higher up the beach where the sand was dry and held the warmth of the day.

Vegeta set the basket down. Bulma spread out a thin, colorful blanket then began setting out goodies.

While they ate Bulma chatted quietly about inconsequentially things. Vegeta interjected the occasional, sarcastic comment to let her know he was paying attention but for the most part he was content to just listen.

When the sun's curve touched the horizon Bulma moved the picnic basket to one side so that she could curl up against Vegeta.

They watched in silence as the sun sank behind the waves. The sky darkened and gradually stars began to appear. The ocean also went dark but the crests of the waves would catch the gleam of distant lights and reflected it back to the stars. The glittering darkness of the ocean gave the illusion that the starry sky stretched out below them as well as above.

Vegeta lifted Bulma up then shifted so she was seated between his legs. He leaned forward and wrapped her in his arms. Bulma snuggled back against him. He rested his chin on her shoulder. Staring out at the emptiness spread before them he felt as if he'd come home.

"Better?" Bulma asked softly after a time.

Vegeta's lips quirked upwards. "Strangely, yes," he admitted.

King Enma paced heavily back and forth across his office. Dende stood in front of Enma's desk, shifting and grimacing. He couldn't help but think about how messengers sometimes got shot.

An ogre ran into the room, panting and out of breath. "We - we searched. Everywhere. From the Pool of Blood to the Soul Cleansing Machine. We checked everywhere, three times. Frieza is not in Hell. He's escaped. No one even remembers the last time they saw him."

King Enma looked grim. "Somewhere around thirteen years ago I image. Probably not long before Vegeta's parents were murdered."

"How could this happen?" Dende exclaimed. "Frieza had become a Dark Soul. He was proud of what he'd done in his life, his only regrets were over the people he'd failed to kill or break."

"Like Vegeta," King Enma sighed. "Frieza kept Vegeta at his side for decades, long after Vegeta-sai's destruction. When Vegeta openly rebelled against him, Frieza killed him but thanks to Goku's wish Vegeta was able to walk away and start a new life. Not many who came in contact with Frieza, even briefly, did so well."

"No," Dende shook his head. "Vegeta had more than enough reason to hate Frieza, but Frieza? Could he really have hated Vegeta enough to form a soul-bond with him simply because Vegeta survived him?"

"You said it yourself: Frieza's only regret was that he couldn't destroy everyone he met. There was no one he put more effort into breaking than Vegeta," King Enma sighed. "We best send someone to recollect him."

"What's the point?" Dende asked. "If he's bound to Vegeta Hell won't be able to hold him. No external force can keep a soul-bonded pair apart. He'll just keep going after Vegeta until he's as corrupted as Frieza himself. All we can do is hope for a minimal degree of collateral damage."

Dende groaned as he recalled his brief association with the Saiyan Prince and the Ice-jin Overlord. "Who am I kidding? They destroyed my entire planet in a matter of days. The Earth's doomed."

"We'll recollect Frieza," King Enma stated calmly. "We may not be able to keep Frieza from Vegeta forever, but at least we can give the poor kid a break. Remember, he's no longer accountable for the deaths of your neighbors. You're a Guardian, Dende, you have to be above these things."

Dende looked down at the floor, accepting the rebuke. "I know, but their potential for destruction is so immense," he said. "Wouldn't it be better to cut our losses and get it over with as soon as possible?"

"It's not our place," King Enma replied. "Frieza is a Dark Soul, his evil is saturated into every pore of his being, he has no potential to become anything better. It's our duty to keep him from the Material Realm to the best of our ability. Vegeta is not. We can't break the chains binding him to Frieza, but he can. If he can let go of his hatred. Vegeta has the right to another chance, even if his chances aren't good."


End file.
